If Ever I Cease to Love
by Startide Risen
Summary: In February of 2008, a hunt takes the Winchesters to New Orleans in time for Mardi Gras. Dean's plan is to work the job, get elbow-deep in oyster po-boys, and hit the parade route. But what Dean plans and what takes place ain't ever exactly been similar.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's Note: _Many thanks to Dress Without Sleeves for the take-no-prisoners edit. She has made this story far better than it was, and I'm very grateful for her generosity with her time and her enthusiasm.

**If Ever I Cease to Love**

Dean remembered New Orleans as a pair of sister cities separated by two weeks of standing water.

The first city was the heat of flambeaux and the opulence of parades in the humid March night, hip-rocking blues on a corner of Frenchman Street, and a Tulane senior grinning at him with a rum and coke in her hand. "Hey, sugar. Dance with me?" It was fried oysters, gumbo with andouille sausage, and cayenne on his tongue cooled with long drafts of crisp beer. It was the Lalaurie mansion, a cemetery called Odd Fellows' Rest, and a subculture of psychics and conjurers who knew what lived in the dark. And God bless them, but they even kept their stiffs above ground where he didn't have to dig for them. Dean was nineteen and of an age to fall in love.

"We're here to work," Dad kept reminding him. "I get that this place might as well be a theme park built just for you, but I need you focused."

"He didn't mean on the waitress, jackass," Sam said, bumping his shoulder and grinning at his own wit. That was the last spring before the kid started hating everyone's guts.

Seven years later, Dean walked the streets of the second city.

"Pastor Jim needs a favor," Dad said over the phone. "A friend of his thinks she's got an angry spirit on her hands. Elena Washington's her name."

"Where?"

"New Orleans."

On a barstool in nice, dry Little Rock, Dean sat up a bit straighter. "Dad, have you been watching the news lately?"

"I have. Don't piss off the Guard while you're there."

It was a bitch getting into the city, even with the badge Dean flashed when he needed to. His first good look snaking in on River Road was like coming back to a one night stand and finding her horribly disfigured. This second city smelled of mold, stagnant sewage, and a stark chemical stench magnified by the heat. A waterline was inked on rows upon rows of empty houses, and Dean could drive for blocks without seeing a soul. Then he could look some poor bastard in the eye and wish he hadn't.

Two weeks later, Dean chased a bokor through bombed-out houses, skidding in caked mud, and when he caught the son of a bitch he slammed him onto a warped table and looked him in the eyes.

"You don't profit from this," he hissed. "You don't take from people who've lost everything."

Twenty minutes later, he showed up on Elena Washington's doorstep, and she gasped at what a mess he looked.

"I found him, Miss Elena," he panted. "I doubt he'll try that left-handed shi—I mean, that stuff again."

"What happened, honey?" she said, gripping his chin. "What happened?"

He told her.

The next morning, he was heading west over the Bonnet Carre Spillway, an MRE on the seat next to him and a white aluminum can marked DRINKING WATER secured between his knees. California lay ahead.

::

::

_January 30, 2008  
Fayetteville, North Carolina_

"Encuéntrelo."

Dean had the shotgun leveled on her in a heartbeat. His breath frosted, and the old bone-deep revulsion raised the hair on the back of his neck. A few yards behind him, Sam was busy with the lighter and the accelerant, and Dean was prepared to cover him while he finished the job. But the dead girl only stood there, sad-eyed and half-hidden behind someone else's gravestone.

"Usted tiene que encontrarlo," she said, her hand curled childishly over her heart.

"Find who?" Dean barked, keeping the shotgun on her but moving his finger from trigger to guard.

She lifted a thick-chained necklace over her head, tugging it free of her ragged hair. "El hombre con los ojos negros," she said, laying it on top of the headstone.

Dean felt the flare of heat when the bones went up, and he watched Sonia Torres flicker out of existence.

"It's done?" Sam panted next to the grave.

"Yeah," Dean said vaguely.

"What did she say to you?"

Dean went over to the headstone where something silvery still gleamed in the moonlight. Sonia had left a pair of dog tags. BROUSSARD, JAMES T, they said. Apparently James was A negative and a Catholic.

"I think she told me what killed her."

::

::

"I mean, she was just one more stripper in a military town," Dean said through a mouthful of sausage, egg, and biscuit the next morning. "No family, no close friends. She hanged herself, case closed." He swallowed, washing it down with coffee. "All those witnesses we talked to? She was probably trying to tell them about the man with the black eyes, and none of them understood her."

"Yeah, about that," Sam said, poking at his short stack and regarding him with weird guilt across the booth. "Since when do you speak Spanish?"

Sam seemed to have it in his head lately that he'd somehow failed Dean every time he didn't know a random fact about him. Dean couldn't fathom it until the first time he realized he couldn't remember his father's favorite cigar brand.

"I don't speak it. I just understand a little."

"Didn't you fail Spanish I? Like, two or three times?"

Dean paused with his coffee halfway to his mouth. "Someday I'll tell you about Arizona," he said. When Sam's head tilted curiously, he added: "You were at school."

That was a crap move, especially this early in the morning. But Sam just tilted his head and said, "Someday, huh? Like, within the next three months?"

And ah, shit, Dean knew where this was going. His mug clinked down hard on the table. "Sam. This is not something I'm interested in discussing again."

"This guy I'm talking to—he might be able to help you," Sam said, leaning forward earnestly. "We're running down the clock. We need to look into this."

"We've got a possessed guy killing people," Dean said, spearing a chunk of cantaloupe. "We're going to look into that. Eat your bacon."

They rode in cold silence back to the motel room, where Dean left Sam with the laptop. It was the easiest search he'd done in a while; they had the guy's social security number on his dog tags.

"PFC James Broussard is with the 82nd Airborne," Sam informed him stiffly on the phone half an hour later. "He's twenty-three, he's from New Orleans, Louisiana, and he's done two tours in Iraq since he enlisted in October oh-five."

"Great," Dean said. "I just parked in front of Sonia's strip joint. Maybe somebody here knows where the poor bastard is."

::

::

"Guess what, Sammy."

"You got all the strippers' phone numbers?" Sam said without looking up from his book. He was hunched up near the headboard, scratchy motel sheets across his lap.

"We're going to New Orleans."

That got Sam's attention. "What? Why?"

"Candi-with-an-I says that our guy was a regular, and he had a thing for Sonia. And right now?" Dean said, pulling out the desk chair and straddling it backwards, "Right now he's got leave, and he's gone home. For Mardi Gras."

"You're serious," Sam said flatly.

A beautiful, wonderful thing had happened, and Sam had no business looking so grumpy. "Mardi Gras," Dean repeated, to no effect. "We'll stay for parades after the case wraps. It can be my birthday present."

That was kind of a stretch, seeing as Dean's birthday had come and gone a week before, and no one had said a word. Maybe it was because every major holiday and significant date this year was labeled Dean's Very Last. Or maybe it was because at the moment Dean turned twenty-nine, he'd been yarking up blood and Sam had been waving the Colt in some housewives' faces.

Sam sat up, rumpled and accusatory. "But the conjure man in Charlotte, he's just a couple hours—"

"Birthday present," Dean repeated, because no conjure man was handing out get-out-of-hell-free cards, and he'd had enough of dead ends. After the witch job and the fun news about where demons come from, Sam's trapped expression had only gotten more frantic with every crushed hope.

Sam let his head fall back against the wall, frowning at the ceiling. "We could get you a cupcake with a candle in it. In Charlotte."

But Dean was already throwing things in his duffel, because, dude. Possessed guy. Killing people. _Mardi Gras_. "You remember Krewe d'Etat that one year? What was it, '98?"

"I remember," Sam sighed in resignation, kicking free of the blankets and rolling out of bed. "I got hit in the head by a bag of glowing plastic skulls, and you didn't even notice because your tongue was too far down that girl's throat."

"I was thinking about the talking teddy bear I caught. Remember those bears? You squeezed them, and they went—" Dean put on a squeaky mouse voice: "Hail to the dictator!"

Sam shook his head, lumbering into the bathroom. "I hate Mardi Gras."

"You hate fun," Dean called after him.

"I hate fun." And the bathroom door clicked shut.

New Orleans had been good to Dean once upon a time, and a couple years back, he'd tried to be good to her too. They understood each other. Dean could work the job, get elbow-deep in oyster po-boys, and hit the parade route. A couple of hand grenades, and he might even be drunk enough to tell Sam about Arizona.

::

::

They made it into New Orleans on Friday afternoon, and holy hell, the traffic was ridiculous. The hotels were chock full, and the Winchesters paid through the nose for a nasty little motel room in freaking Metairie. On the other hand, the bars were full of drunk tourists who sucked at pool and poker, so he figured it balanced out.

They had an address for Broussard on Coliseum Street, and it was easy enough to get a phone number to go with it. "Yeah, hi," Sam said when he called. "I'd like to speak to James. Well, could you tell me where he's staying? Oh. Okay, thanks."

There was a pause, and then he hung up. "What?" Dean said.

"She said he hasn't lived there for three years, and she didn't even know he was in town," Sam sighed. "He could be staying anywhere in the city. Hotels, with friends...."

"We don't have time for that crap," Dean muttered, mostly to himself. "I vote we take a shortcut."

"Shortcut?"

::

::

In Miss Elena Washington's neighborhood, half the lots were populated by gutted shells under heavy construction or by weeds gone wild. Some of the houses had been razed to slabs; others dozed in fitful emptiness, balconies nodding down over porches. On some clouded windows, Dean could still see the line left by eight feet of water.

He could have grinned like a lunatic for how far it had come.

"It's been more than two years," Sam murmured, transfixed. He'd stared out the passenger window all the way in on I-10, eyebrows knit darkly at wounds not yet healed over.

"Yeah."

"I thought it would be… better."

Dean cocked an eyebrow at him, then let it go. "Guess not."

Brow furrowed, Sam turned to Dean thoughtfully: "You know this woman from that job right after Hurricane Katrina, right?"

"Stayed on her second floor," Dean said absently, on the watch for Catina Street's monster potholes.

"That was the voodoo thing?"

"Zombis astral."

Sam whistled. "How'd you stop the bokor?"

"We hugged it out."

He saw none of the familiar landmarks—the fridge on the sidewalk that said "HELL OF A JOB, BROWNIE," the red Toyota on the corner with the seats growing green slime—but he found the house without any trouble.

They found Miss Elena in her garden, which Dean remembered as a mushy thicket of gray branches and rotting vegetation. He'd spent evenings clearing it of the debris that had floated in—kids' toys, odd bits of plastic and styrofoam, and one dead cat. Now it was lush and green, and Miss Elena was plucking mint leaves from the overgrown bush under the front windows. She was in overalls and a straw hat, and she looked like she'd gained a few pounds since Dean saw her last.

"Miss Elena?" he called from the gate.

She straightened and looked around, and a closemouthed smile spread across her face. "Dean."

"The neighborhood's looking good, coming back. How've you been, ma'am?"

She set down her handfuls of mint and headed over to the gate. "I get by, I get by. And this here is Sam, is it?"

"Nice to meet you, Miss Washington," Sam said with a nod.

"You call me Miss Elena," she said with a smile that didn't reach her eyes. She swung the gate open and waved them in. "Y'all want a cold drink?" she said, stress falling on the cold. Down here that meant soda; Miss Elena wouldn't have alcohol in the house.

"That'd be great," Dean said.

They followed her up the front steps and into the snug neatness of her kitchen, where she tossed down the mint leaves and cracked open two Big Shot cream sodas. Dean glanced around curiously. Last time he was here, the first floor of this house had looked like a set piece from _Enemy at the Gates_. Now it was sparsely, cheaply furnished, and the walls were papered in ugly floral patterns instead of black blooms of mold.

In '05, the dining room table had floated across those doors there and come to rest without disturbing the vase on top. The papery gray flowers had still stood at a jaunty angle the morning Dean left.

"Here you are," Miss Elena said, sliding the cream sodas across her folding table. She sank into a chair, folded her hands neatly in her lap, and said, "Now what's on your mind?"

She had said the same exact words to him just hours before he caught the bokor, and her expression had been almost grandmotherly. After two weeks in her house, doing her heavy lifting, he'd earned himself a dozen pet names and a whole lot of grateful affection.

Now she regarded him professionally, and she kept casting wary looks at Sam.

"We're looking for a soldier on leave," Dean said. "We've got a name, but he could be anywhere in the city and we need to find him fast."

"Why's that?"

"He might be dangerous," Sam said. When her expression didn't change, he added: "Possessed."

Miss Elena breathed in deep, leaning back in her chair. "Oh," she said, very quietly. Her gaze slid slowly and deliberately to Dean. "What you going to do with this one if I find him for you?"

Dean said nothing. Let her judge if she wanted.

"We're going to stop him," Sam said, glancing between them curiously. "Exorcise the demon."

Miss Elena nodded, eyes lingering on Dean. "I better cast the bones."

"Will these help?" Dean said, pulling Broussard's dog tags out of his pocket and sliding them across the plastic tabletop.

"Can't hurt, can't hurt," she said, reaching out and gathering the chain into one fist. "James T. Broussard," she read. She stood and reached above her head, where bundled herbs hung suspended. From among them, she pulled down two small bags, and from a drawer she pulled a canvas cloth marked with a circle in thick black. "Y'all be quiet now," she muttered to Sam and Dean.

They obeyed, elbows off the table, and they watched her work. Dean had seen her do this once before, and it honestly didn't look like much. She laid down the tablecloth, poured sand from one of the bags, and spread it in the circle like she was making a Zen sand garden. Then she sat back and closed her eyes, breathing unnaturally deep.

Dean's leg started bouncing. Sam knocked their knees together, and he stopped.

Miss Elena's arm darted out like it had a mind of its own, and her fingers closed around the other bag. She flicked her wrist, and six tiny bird bones tumbled out onto the sand. Her eyes snapped open, flickering and searching, tracing the gouges in the sand and the pattern of the bones.

"Hmmm," she sighed.

And then her eyes fluttered shut, and her chin dropped to her chest. The dog tags clattered to the floor, leaving red imprints on her palms.

"Miss Elena?" Dean said, reaching out to her.

Her head snapped up, and a smirk tugged at one side of her mouth. "Either of you got a tux?"

::

::

"I can't believe we're doing this again."

"It's the easiest way," Sam said, smacking him in the chest with a bundle of black and white. "Iron that before you wear it."

"Can't we just ninja around the place?" Dean said, aware of the whiny note in his voice and unable to stop it. "Why the hell do we have to mingle?"

Sam didn't dignify that with a response. Miss Elena had already explained that the Krewe of Mystery's bal masque was a black-tie affair, and that security would take an interest in anyone so gauche as to ninja around in jeans. Dean played the first card that came to mind—"Do I look like I own a tux?"—but Sam, the bastard, had an ace up his sleeve.

"Gertrude Case told me to keep the tuxes we wore for that heist. As a present," he said sourly. Three months later, and he still refused to see what was so freaking hilarious about that incident.

"Looks like you're all set," Miss Elena said. "Slip in the back since you ain't got an invite. Now I looked and saw through the boy's eyes, and mostly I saw the open bar. So keep a lookout there."

"Yeah, thanks," Dean muttered.

He wore his boots under the satin-lined slacks.

"Are you ready yet?" Sam said through the bathroom door a couple hours later. "It's almost nine."

Dean poked at the bowtie one last time, rolled his eyes, and opened the door. "Let's go."

"Where are your dress shoes?" Sam demanded.

"They don't fit." It might even be true; Dean hadn't tried them on.

"You can't wear boots, Dean."

Dean walked past him, grabbed his car keys, and headed for the door. "Aren't we late?"

They made it to the car with a minimum of grumbling. But with one hand on the door handle, Sam paused and pursed his lips at Dean across the roof.

"Are me and my boots going to embarrass you that much?" Dean said.

"How'd you stop the bokor in '05?"

It sounded like honest curiosity, but honest curiosity would have waited until after the demon-hunting. "Why do you want to know?"

Sam shrugged, looking away. "It seemed important to Elena."

"It was," Dean admitted. _What happened, honey? Whose blood is this?_

"Did you kill him?" Sam asked evenly.

Dean let out a long breath. _I had no choice_, he'd told Elena.

_It's all right_, she'd said over and over, taping gauze to his back. And she'd looked at him different.

"A guy pulls a knife on you in an abandoned house in a freaking empty city, what are you going to do?"

Sam nodded, rolling his lips. "I'm just remembering Roy LeGrange," he said, and suddenly Dean liked this conversation even less. "You said we had to stop him—kill him."

"Yeah?"

Sam shrugged. "But you thought I should mope and wring my hands over Gordon Walker."

_Yeah. I thought that._

Very quietly, Dean said, "Get in the car, Sam."

::

::

The tea room was easy to slip into after a quick walk under the oak trees to cross the cool darkness of Audubon Park. They found a gap in the tall, manicured bushes hung with tiny white lights, and they strolled right onto the veranda. "Okay," Dean said, eyes scanning clusters of women in floor-length satin and men in tuxes or tails. There were even a few krewe members in their bright, sequined costumes, wearing masks with wide, sloppy eye holes. Masks wouldn't make Dean's job any easier. "You want to take the outside, I'll take the inside?"

But the clusters of people had just started moving for the open French doors.

"Looks like inside is the place to be," Sam said.

They followed the crowd. Hardwood floors, blue-and-silver hangings, and neat rows of chairs awaited in the warm, golden light of the ballroom. Two massive sprays of roses stood on either side of a painted wooden throne. The whole setup set Dean's teeth on edge. "Are we coming up on the make-believe royalty part?" he muttered to Sam.

"Yeah, I think this is the presentation of the court."

Research Boy had this part figured. "All right, let's find our guy."

They moved off in separate directions through the crowd, trying to match a face to the military ID of James Broussard that they'd both studied. Dean stepped on at least two trailing dresses, and he brushed shoulders with a guy in a polyester gray coat and a Confederate kepi. Grown men playing dress-up. Huh.

Then the lights went out.

"Crap," Dean hissed.

He hadn't figured on the krewe putting on a show, but apparently that's what "presentation of the court" meant. A jazz band filled the room with a tune swinging out of the Big Band era. Drunk maskers paraded around the dance floor throwing beads, and then dukes in purple, green, and gold started marching out to the theme from Lord of the Rings.

This was really not the Mardi Gras Dean had signed on for. He took a moment to stare. The dukes were in tights, for God's sake. Tights and hats with big tall plumes of feathers on top.

Then he shook his head, engaged his weirdness filter, and took the opportunity to scan the crowd. The reflected light of all the ridiculous pageantry illuminated their faces softly, and Dean saw… nothing, nothing, and nothing. Of course, Broussard could be one of the jackasses in masks. It would be really, massively helpful if he happened to be wearing his dress uniform, but—

"Excuse me," someone said, laying a gentle hand on his arm.

He looked down into a pair of pretty brown eyes, and then further down at one hell of a dress. It wasn't every day a chick in blue satin walked out of an old movie and tapped him on the arm. "You are most definitely excused," he said, letting the grin spread across his face.

The woman's smile turned faintly amused. "Can I beg a favor?"

"Please do."

"My little sister is being presented next," she said, going up on tiptoe to be heard over the music. On her toes, she was only eye level with his bowtie, so he bent down and put his ear next to her mouth. "I can't see over everyone's heads. Would you mind?" She held up a thin digital camera.

Would he mind. "Sure thing," he said, flashing another grin. He took the camera, brushing her fingers. "I'm Dean."

"Maria," she said, offering her hand. He shook it, and then she turned back toward the dance floor as the band transitioned seamlessly into one of those Disney princess songs. "There she is."

One of the guys in tights and feathers led a teenaged version of Maria—same dark hair, same smile—into the spotlight. She carried red roses, and Dean thought he saw a gleam of braces.

"She looks just like you," he said to Maria. "Lucky kid."

She laughed appreciatively, and he allowed himself an inner fist pump. On the dance floor, the little sister walked and curtsied, curtsied and walked, and Dean snapped photos of the amazing feat. Then she took her place up onstage next to the throne, and he handed the camera back.

"Thank you so much," Maria said, holding his eyes just a moment longer than she needed to. Dean was prepared to revise his opinion of this whole evening if she was angling to take him home.

But then she nodded in an oddly formal way, and she disappeared into the crowd.

Dean shrugged, let it go, and got his mind back on the job. Another few minutes of crowd-combing, and he still had nothing. He spotted Sam not far away, and edged between heavily perfumed women to get to him.

Under cover of the king and queen of Mystery doing their grand march thing to really important-sounding music, the Winchesters held a quick conference.

"You don't think Elena had it wrong, do you?"

"Maybe Broussard's late," Dean said with a shrug. "This thing goes on for another couple of hours."

"We've been going off an ID," Sam said, eyes on the scepter-waving going on over Dean's shoulder. He raised his voice over the applause: "It's probably a horrible picture."

"Yeah, well," Dean said, turning to watch the court disperse and the dancing begin. "It's what we've got."

The French doors were open again, but most people were opting to stay in the warmth and glitter. Most, but not all. Dean noticed a young guy duck out into the darkness with a drink in his hand. He was about five-six, and he had a sturdy look to him.

"He fits the description," Dean said, nudging Sam.

"So do a dozen other short guys with dark hair. But yeah, sure."

They headed out into the chilly night, letting their eyes adjust to the dimness. Dean didn't see the guy anywhere, so he and Sam followed the curve of the veranda. They walked all the way to the opposite side and saw only old ladies in beaded gowns.

On the way back, they heard voices out in the garden.

"Stop it," a woman said, tense and frightened. "Let go of me."

"Shhh," someone else murmured. "Hush."

"What—what are you doing? Ah!"

"James, you're hurting her!" a girl's voice shouted.

Sam and Dean both started running.

They were hurtling around a hedge when they saw it: the sturdy guy had his hands wrapped around the throat of a woman in blue satin. He shoved her away choking, and he grabbed the shoulders of a girl in a white dress. In one smooth, brutal motion, he sent her crashing into a low brick wall. Her head struck heavily, and she slid to the ground like a broken doll.

The woman in blue was trying to scream. It was Maria, Dean realized, and the girl in white was her sister.

Dean was there in less than a second, and a punch to the face sent James Broussard reeling. Dean felt something liquid on his knuckles, too thick to be blood. Broussard straightened, and Dean saw that both his cheeks were streaked with black.

Ectoplasm.

Time to revise a couple of assumptions.

"Grab him!" Sam yelled, and on reflex, Dean threw himself into a takedown. Broussard kept his cool, hit the grass under him in a disturbingly professional guard, and immediately tried to sweep Dean sideways. The bastard knew his way around some ground fighting.

"Salt!" Dean yelled, striking fast and brutal at Broussard's face. Not one hit landed, but they kept him busy.

Sam put an end to the grappling by simply straddling Broussard in a full mount. There was only so much fighting you could do when you had the Ginormotron sitting on your chest. Sam pried the guy's jaw open, poured in half a flask of salt, forced his mouth shut, and held it there.

They panted through a few tense moments, expecting a shadowy form to go somersaulting away.

"Emma," Maria was saying, hoarse and hyper-calm. She knelt over the girl, methodically checking her pupils. "Come on, ti-bé. Emma."

An expanding cloud of black smoke seemed to burst all around Broussard, swallowing Sam and Dean and chilling them to the bone. Sam actually rolled away from him, yelling "Christo!" at the top of his lungs.

Then the black smoke imploded into Broussard's chest, gone as fast as it came.

"What the hell?" Dean said.

Beneath him, Broussard rolled sideways and started retching up salt. "Ugh, aw, nasty," he choked out, gagging and spitting. He shoved at Dean and growled, "Get the fuck off me."

The Winchesters looked from him to each other and back again.

"Emma, sweetie," Maria was still saying. "Emma."

No one answered her.


	2. Chapter 2

They were all overdressed for the waiting room at Children's Hospital.

"Fuck," James said for the fiftieth time, bent double in a plastic chair. The ends of his bowtie hung loose from his neck, and he scrubbed his hands across his face again. "Fucking hell."

As it turned out, Maria and Emma were his sisters. When a man in scrubs had shown up in the waiting room and talked about Emma with words like "intracranial pressure," James had actually run off to be sick somewhere.

Maria had stayed, nodding along and asking questions about shunts and seizures with her hands folded neatly in her lap and a red handprint fading on her left cheek.

By the time the police showed up at the hospital, Sam had had enough time to coach the Broussards into a coherent story.

"Lying to cops isn't like lying to anyone else," he'd cautioned Maria.

She'd ducked her head and said, "I know."

"Really?" said Dean skeptically. If Maria couldn't handle this, then their best lead was going where they couldn't get to him.

She met his eyes guardedly, and he expected her to tell him it was none of his damn business. But instead she said, "They've taken an interest in James before."

_And you lied through your perfect red lipstick_, Dean thought. Because cops were a poor man's worry; they never made it up the steps of those ivory towers.

"I seem to remember you swearing you'd never cover my ass again," James said behind her. "Right before you told me never to set foot in the fucking house."

She didn't look at him, and the only sign she'd even heard him was the clench of her jaw.

Sam and Dean exchanged glances. _Awkward_.

As it turned out, Maria was a half-decent liar. "It was an accident," she told one cop shakily. "A stupid accident." Then she went on about James being drunk and spinning Emma around and somebody falling and somebody tripping on a dress.

"Yeah, so who left those bruises on your neck?" NOPD wanted to know.

Sam's script didn't account for that. Maria raised a nervous hand to her collarbone, and the note of hesitation in her voice worked perfectly. "My—my date. I won't be seeing him again."

"And the shiner your brother's got coming?"

That wasn't in the script either. Maria paused just a second too long—

"That was me, officer," Dean cut in. Shrugging, he answered the cop's raised eyebrow with: "He called me a grabass cousin-fucking redneck shitbird. I couldn't let that pass, could I?"

Maria stared at him. He winked, and she choked on surprised laughter.

When NOPD left, she sat in a pink plastic chair and pretended her brother wasn't three feet away. Instead she turned a laser focus on Dean.

"You hunt ghosts," she said in a raw, strained voice, eyeing him like he might change his story if she glared long enough. "And what happened back there—that was spirit possession?"

"Do you have a better explanation?" he said, resisting a sigh and an eye-roll. He'd had this conversation too many times before.

She cast her eyes down and went quiet, frowning at the runner board. It took Dean a few seconds to realize that she was giving serious, desperate thought to the question. "Some kind of psychoactive drug that did weird things to his tear ducts?"

"And made clouds of black smoke come out of him?"

Her lower lip trembled. "God."

For a second Dean thought her careful calm had cracked, but she sucked down a breath and closed her eyes until the moment passed. Sam sat down next to her, working the dewy eyes and the concerned voice. "Please, it would help us a lot if you could tell us what happened immediately before."

They'd already asked James. He didn't remember much after his sixth drink, and that was before he even got to the ball. He hadn't been lying when he said, "Officer, I have no fucking clue."

"We argued," Maria said slowly. "I told him to call a cab and go home."

James glanced over, listening resentfully to the way everything had gone to hell when he wasn't looking.

"Why?" said Dean. "Was he acting strange, or just drunk?"

"Drunk. I took his keys from him, and I, ah," she bit her lip. "I said some things I shouldn't have."

"What did you say?" Sam coaxed. "I'm sorry to ask, but anything could be helpful. Ghosts latch onto the most random stuff."

She flinched at the word "ghosts," but then she swallowed and said, "I told him he didn't care about Emma. I said he'd just disappoint her again."

Two chairs over, James bowed his head, fists and forearms constructing a shield against the world. He sucked in a hissing breath, and Dean hoped like hell he wasn't going to cry or some shit.

"Then what?" said Sam.

She made an embarrassed gesture to the mostly faded handprint on her cheek.

"Has that ever happened before?"

"I'm an asshole drunk," James said, raising his head to glare, daring them to judge him. "So yeah, that was probably me and not y'all's ghost."

Dean stared him down, wondering what he might have done to a stripper if this was how he treated his own sister. What would he look like with another black eye to match the first?

"I didn't even think, I just hit him back," Maria said. She kept glancing past Sam's sympathetic expression, like she knew all about faked sincerity, and she watched Dean watching her brother. "Emma saw, and she came running. But James sort of went still. And then he was… I don't know. Someone else."

"That's when he grabbed you?" Sam said.

"Yes. That's when y'all showed up."

Dean looked James' hunched figure up and down. "And you don't remember any of this?"

James breathed in deep through his nose. "No, I don't."

"Do you have any other big gaps in your memory?"

"None that Jim, Jack, and José couldn't account for."

"Can you think of where you might have picked up a passenger?"

"Picked up a—you mean an _angry spirit_?" James said with a snort. "No. No, I do not."

Dean couldn't stop the derisive smile. "Do you know anything useful at all?"

James leveled a glare at him—the kind that made Dean believe this guy had seen combat. "Asshole. You think I—"

"Don't be an idiot," Maria said without looking at him. "They're trying to help us."

After a brief, uneasy silence, Sam fished in his jacket pocket and pulled out a folded rectangle of newsprint. He held up Sonia Torres' smiling face. "Do you know her?"

"The fuck does she have to do with anything?" James said, leaping up and snatching the clipping. It unfolded in his hand, and the headline fluttered into view. _Woman found dead in home_.

"She strangled to death, hanging in a closet," Sam said, watching Maria gently tug the clipping from James' hand. "She seemed to think you had something to do with it."

"No," James said flatly, looking more pissed off than shocked. "I went home with her once, that's it. I never touched her again."

"That you remember," Maria said quietly, thumb brushing across Sonia's pixelated cheek.

James knocked the picture away and grabbed her wrist. "You believe them, Mia? You think I killed that girl?"

"Hey, take it easy," Sam and Dean were both saying, stepping toward them. But Maria had already clasped her free hand over James' white knuckles, and she spoke to him in the firm, even tone people use with frightened animals.

"Not you, okay? These men say you've got a passenger in there, and"—she made a face—"I don't have a better explanation for the weird shadows and the black goo." She rocked James back on his heels with a gentle shove. "Calm down."

It was about then that Dean figured out which of them was the older sibling.

"So," James said hoarsely, glaring around at them all. "Why aren't the cops after me?"

"The cops think it was suicide," Sam said coolly. Pointedly he swept the clipping off the floor and back into his pocket.

"Shit," James muttered, like a girl dead by his hand was just a passing misfortune. But his eyes followed Sam's motion almost involuntarily. He cleared his throat. "How do I get rid of this passenger?"

"We find out who it is, and we burn the bones," Dean said. "It would help to know where you picked it up."

"We can't retrace his steps," Maria said. "All over the city, back to Fort Benning… Baghdad."

"Let's take him to somebody who can," Sam said, catching Dean's eye.

"Elena."

Maria frowned, glancing between them. "Take him where?"

Sam started the Muggle-friendly explanation: "Elena is more sensitive than most people to—"

"She's a conjure woman," Dean said, and Maria's lips twitched just as they had for _ghost_. "I doubt she'll see us until morning, though. She's kind of anal about bedtimes."

"What the fuck, man?" James burst out. "I'm an axe-crazy murderer, and your plan is some Tarot and incense?"

Maria shot him a look, then said, "May I come?"

Dean's first instinct was to tell her no on the grounds that she was starting to freak him out. She stood there in her ball gown with her perfect posture, and she talked like she was asking for an invite to a tea party. _No, you may not come, princess._

"Who's going to stay here with Emma?" he said.

Maria dropped her eyes and made a little noise of assent.

"In the meantime," Sam said, turning to James. "You don't get out of our sight."

"Ooh, fun," James deadpanned. "Sleepover."

::

::

"So how'd that happen?" Dean said to the rearview mirror. James was brooding in the backseat. He would camp out in their motel room tonight, and they would take it in shifts to sit up and watch him.

"How'd what happen?" he said grouchily.

"How did you and Miss Finishing School grow up in the same house?"

There were death threats and dueling pistols in the look James shot him. "Don't talk about my sister."

"I mean, who's the redheaded step-child here?"

"It's late, man," Sam said on a sigh. He was probably wondering how he grew up with the asshat who picked fights with possessed guys.

"You know what, don't look at her either," James said, glaring out the window at a few straggling tourists laden down with Mardi Gras beads. "Stare at her rack one more time, and I'll break your legs."

"You can slap her around, but I can't look, huh?"

"Dean," Sam said under his breath. "Let it go."

James' lip curled. "You and me, we know each other," he said, meeting Dean's eyes in the rearview mirror. "And I know ten dumb grunts just like us. So I know what I'm talking about when I tell you not to look at her."

"Oh, this is going to be awesome," Sam groaned, sinking down in the passenger seat.

::

::

"Good morning, Sam, Dean. Come in, come in."

"Miss Washington," James said, stiffly polite. He was still in his tux, and he looked a wreck. Most of the previous night had been thrashing nightmares or anxious lying awake, interrupted when he'd sit bolt upright, reach for his cell phone, and call Maria at the hospital again. "How is she? No change?"

Dean sat through his watch with the laptop open and glowing, going down the Wikipedia rabbit hole and trying to ignore the guy twisting his sheets into knots. He woke Sam at four, and just before drifting off he heard Sam say, "You didn't do anything to Emma, okay?"

"What?" James snapped.

"The spirit did it to you both. Get some sleep."

So this morning, Dean didn't shove James through Elena's doorway too hard—just nudged him in the back to get him across the threshold.

"Call me Miss Elena."

"Yes, ma'am," James said dutifully.

The kitchen was cramped with three big guys in it, and Miss Elena waved Sam and Dean off to the sidelines. They leaned against the counters, letting her do her thing.

"Take a seat, darlin'. Now we're going to take this real slow, your first time. Here, give me your hands. Breathe in deep—that's it. These boys tell me you got a spirit in you, so I'm going to have a look. It won't hurt any, I promise."

"Yeah? What are the sawed-offs for?" James said, casting a rebellious glare at the Winchesters.

"They're loaded with rock salt," Sam said, laying his down on the counter. "In case something goes wrong."

James snorted derisively. "Non-lethal force, huh? You're going to shoot a man, shoot to kill."

"We're not shooting a _man_, Private Pyle," Dean said.

"Dean Joseph Winchester," Miss Elena said pleasantly. "You can't say something nice, I'll thank you to say nothing at all."

He blinked at her. "My middle name isn't Joseph."

"I know that. It was my son's," she muttered, reaching for James' hands again. In an undertone to him, she added: "I needed the rhythm."

Sam bit his lip to keep from smiling.

"Deep breaths," Miss Elena reminded James. "And close your eyes for me. All right now, all right. Listen close to the air going in, air going out." Her voice had gone hypnotic and slow, coming up sonorous from somewhere deep in her chest. "That's it. Listen, listen closer, and hear your own pulse in your ears." Dean didn't mean to obey her—he was here on guard—but there was no denying that hammock-swing voice. Her hands traced steadily up and down James' forearms, and the rocking motion was perfectly in time with her words. "Like the echo in a conch shell. Tide in, tide out. And breathe. Breathe."

Dean felt more than saw Sam going loose next to him, shoulders unknitting and lungs filling like they hadn't in—God, it seemed like months. He could feel his own heavy head tilting back on his neck; his airway seemed to open up, and he could breathe something other than the promise of sulfur.

"How you feel, sweetie?" Miss Elena murmured.

_I feel like I've got my head in Cassie's lap, and she's doing that thing where she runs her fingernails over my scalp, and_ shit, she wasn't talking to him.

"Awesome," James said on a sigh of release.

"Good, that's good. You just float on that, okay? Listen and breathe, and know you're weightless. Just floating there." And she leaned forward across the table, tipping his chin up gently. "Open your eyes, James."

He did, and they were glazed over contentedly. Miss Elena looked straight into them, her gaze going soft and distant, and held the connection.

Thirty seconds passed, and the spell over the room seemed to dissipate. Dean shifted against the counter, and Sam shot him a quelling look.

"Oh," Miss Elena gasped, and the Winchesters' shotguns were in their hands in a second.

Sam hit the wall with an almighty thump, and the impact knocked down a picture frame. Dean felt the familiar mass of solid air slam into him, and he crashed through Miss Elena's bedroom door, splinters flying.

James stood with outstretched arms and black streaming from his eyes. The chair clattered backward behind him. Lightning-fast, he burst through the front door and vaulted down the steps.

Suddenly released, Sam and Dean grabbed their weapons and scrambled after him.

But there was no one outside.

They pounded turf in a few likely directions, yelling to each other and whipping around corners barrel first. They peered into the windows of empty, gutted houses, and they almost shot a few stray cats.

The bastard had disappeared. In broad fucking daylight.

"This is bullshit," Dean panted ten minutes later.

"Even on foot, he's long gone by now," Sam said darkly. "Have you ever seen a spirit do that before?"

"You mean run when it could get in your space and be creepy? Nope."

"Come on, before we get arrested for waving guns around." Sam headed up the street, skirting a pot hole. "Maybe Elena can tell us something."

Miss Elena was working feverishly at the kitchen table when they came up the front stairs. She'd cast the bones messily, and the circle of sand was pocked and gouged like a miniature battleground. "I can't find him," she told them somberly. "I look, and all I see is dry bones."

"Sorry about your door," Dean said awkwardly.

She waved him off. "There's bigger worries now. That spook, it's something else. There's no name or past there—nothing—and it's got power like I've never seen. I just touched it. And _bam_."

"Did it give you any idea what it wanted?" Sam said, picking up the crucifix and the soft, simpering portrait of Mother Mary that his heavy ass had knocked off the wall.

"I saw roses and a girl's hair. Whole lot of dark hair," she said, hands spread in bafflement. She looked down at her palms and said, "I felt satin."

::

::

"No name, no past. So how do we find some freaking bones to burn?"

Sam brushed hurriedly past a short man in scrubs, scanning room numbers. "We find James."

"He's still in his tux. You'd think he'd be easy to spot."

Sam shook his head. "If the spirit's after one of his sisters, that means—"

"It means we've got to babysit," Dean grumbled.

Sam shook his head. "It means he hasn't gone far. Here it is."

Emma Broussard had a private room now that she was out of the Emergency Care Center. The door marked 314 stood open, and Dean and Sam rushed in without taking the time to knock.

James hadn't beaten them there. Maria sat propped up by pillows on the bed, half-squashed by a rumpled pile of hospital gown and a mess of greasy hair. It was Emma, curled up with her arm thrown across her sister's waist and a thumb hooked in the belt loop of her jeans.

"We need to talk to you," Sam said. Maria shifted, murmuring to Emma, who sat up painfully. Dean's first thought was that this couldn't possibly be last night's grinning kid with the roses. Not with that ashen face marred by the imprints of Maria's shirt buttons, and not with those red-rimmed, unfocused eyes.

"What's wrong?" Maria said, looking oddly vulnerable with her face bare of makeup.

Dean slammed the door shut and locked it behind him. "The shit kind of hit the fan."

"James?" Emma said. Her gaze was fixed on a point slightly to the left of him.

The hope in her voice was enough to give him pause. "I—no, he's not…" But she wasn't asking about James. Emma's face was expectant, like any second Dean was going to come over, give her a hug, tuck her blankets around her, and make everything better. Standing at her bedside, Maria looked stricken, and the full weight of the girl's blank eyes hit Dean hard.

"Can you see, kid?" he said, suddenly hoarse.

Sam had already figured that much out, of course, and he shot Dean a look. _Tact, man. Learn some._

Emma's face fell, like she'd disappointed him somehow. "I…"

Maria was trying to master herself long enough to explain. "Transient cortical blindness," she said in a rasp. "It can"—she swallowed, "—it can sometimes resolve itself hours after the injury and _where is my brother_?"

"The spirit is a lot stronger than we thought," Sam answered immediately, balancing deftly between urgency and gentleness. "He shook us off at Elena's, and if there's anyplace he might go—"

"James." Emma was two steps behind the conversation, brow furrowed. "I heard him."

"No, bébé," Maria said, laying a hand on her shoulder.

"I'm sorry," Dean said, and meant it. "My name's Dean Harrison, and the other guy is my brother Sam."

"Hi," Sam said, and just managed to stop himself waving.

"You sound just like him," Emma said in a small voice.

"He'll come see you soon," Maria said automatically, her eyes locked on the Winchesters but somehow far away. "As soon as he can."

"If there's anyplace you know of where we should start looking," Sam went on, "now's the time to say."

"You lost him," Maria said flatly.

"Yeah," Dean said.

She took a shaky breath through her nose. "He just... disappeared."

_I'm pissed off about it too, lady_. "Yeah."

Maria turned her back on them, went over to the loveseat under the window, and picked up her car keys with trembling hands. "Thank you for your help," she said, hiking her purse over her shoulder. "I think you should leave now."

Dean raised an eyebrow at her, and he could practically feel Sam doing the same next to him.

She lifted her chin imperiously. "Please."

"What, are you going to go find him yourself?" Sam said, struggling to sound confused instead of outright disdainful.

She swallowed, glancing at the locked door. "I asked you to leave."

"Mia?" her little sister said behind her. "What's going on?"

"If you do find James," Dean said, "what happens when he tries to choke you again? Have you got salt or holy water on you? Are you going to try a Roman exorcism, or do you think this falls more in the Eastern Orthodox tradition?"

"That's not…" she breathed. Her hands' shaking had become a faint, full body tremor, and her pale skin had gone chalky. "This can't be happening."

_Oh, fantastic. Delayed denial. My favorite._

"You know what you saw," Sam said quietly.

Her head shook in tiny, aborted jerks. "I don't… I don't know."

"Mia," Emma murmured again, reaching tentatively toward her sister's voice.

"Yeah, you do know," Sam said. "And you need our help."

"None of this makes any sense," Maria whispered with brimming eyes.

"This is what we do, okay?" Dean said, reaching over to the door and very deliberately flipping the lever on the lock. She visibly relaxed when she heard it turn over. "It doesn't always go smooth, but we get the job done."

She gave him a long, searching look, and he tried to look trustworthy. It didn't seem to help, so he gave up trying to look like anything and just returned her gaze.

Finally, she nodded on a long exhale.

"Are you all right?" Sam said, taking a step closer to her. She nodded again, swiping at her eyes.

"Come here," Emma said, her face scrunched painfully. Maria caught her searching hand and sat down next to the kid's knees. "What's going on?"

Maria's throat worked soundlessly, so Dean filled the silence. "You got smacked in the head, kid. Give your brain a rest."

Sam shot him a dirty look, but Maria must have agreed with him, because she took advantage of her little sister's mental fuzz to nudge her gently back against the pillows. "James brought some drama home. We'll sort it out."

The kid frowned, but she let herself sink back groggily. "Kay."

Sam shifted his stance, and he put on his Fed Face—head inclined, brows knitted, mouth serious. It was amazing the things people would tell him when confronted with that face, a pen, and a little spiral notebook. "Anyplace James frequents," he repeated patiently.

"I…" Maria looked pained and doubtful at once. "Why would the…the thing—why would it go anywhere James used to go? You said it's not him."

"But it's in his head, and it's got access to his memories. That's our best lead right now," Sam said. But she hesitated, her hand straying to her throat in an uncertain gesture, and Sam traded a frustrated glance with Dean. "Should we talk about this in the hall?"

Maria's hand stilled, and she shook her head like she was shaking off the ambient weirdness. "Ah, okay. Okay. He used to practically live in the bars on Magazine. He had an apartment in the neighborhood, and most of his Tulane friends are still there." She pulled a pen and a receipt out of her purse and started scribbling down names and addresses in tiny cursive. "Start with The Bulldog, and ask for Andrew. They used to room together."

"Thanks," Sam said, accepting the list. Dean made a grab for it, and Sam fended him off with an elbow at chest height. "Nah-ah. I got this one."

"At least let me shoot you for it," Dean said indignantly, rock-paper-scissors at the ready.

"I said I've got it," Sam said, jamming the receipt into his pocket and waving him off. "Watch some TV."

Honestly, it was a sensible division of labor. Sam was good at schmoozing with college kids in bars; Dean was good at beating their asses at pool and hitting on their girlfriends. So he shrugged grumpily and said, "Drive around the fucking potholes, you understand me?"

"You're not going with him?" Maria said.

"I'm hanging out here in case the spook decides to drop by."

Her hand hovered near her throat again. "Do you think that's likely?"

He glanced at Emma, who was out cold with her mouth slightly open and her hair squashed against the pillow. "I think we're being careful."

"Hey, maybe _Days of Our Lives_ is on," Sam said, and he flashed them a grin right before the door swung shut behind him.

Maria watched him go. Wryly, she said, "You're babysitting."

Dean made a thoughtful moue, and then nodded. "The parents just left"—and he jerked his head after Sam. "You want to make out on the couch?"

For a second, Maria just stared at him.

_No, don't take it like_—

But then she let out a short, incredulous laugh, half-muffled by her hand over her mouth. _Post traumatic hysterical giggling_, Dean thought, watching her helpless grin and shaking shoulders. _It beats the hell out of tears and screaming._ He allowed himself a smile, two-parts amused and one-part smug, and said, "I call dibs on the chair."

She gestured—go ahead—and he made himself comfortable. He found the remote, flipped through stations until he found the local news, and settled in. Freaking babysitting.


	3. Chapter 3

For the next three hours, Dean stayed within shouting distance of Room 314 and tried not to feel like a guard dog chained to a fence. It helped that Maria had her Mac with her, and he could refresh the local news page every ten minutes in case James did anything in the grand tradition of undead attention whores—like, say, tear someone's arm off or light drunk tourists on fire.

Finally, Sam called to check in. "Nobody's seen him."

"You talked to whatsisface?"

"And a dozen other people. His friends all hang out at the neighborhood bars drinking microbrews in this weird little fraternity. And not one of them has even spoken to James in months."

"Yeah," Dean sighed. "I've been keeping an eye on the news, and it's all parades. No word on possessed guys with combat training, but hey—Krewe d'Etat rides tonight."

"Shame we'll have to miss that."

"Find him fast, and we'll be free for Bacchus tomorrow."

"Sure we will." Sam took a long, impatient breath, and Dean half-expected him to hang up. But then he said, "It's weird. They keep talking about how they haven't seen James much since the storm. About how he enlisted and shipped out right after the storm. Like it never thundered any other time in the whole history of the world."

"Heh, yeah," Dean said, glancing at the Broussard girls. They were both asleep, Emma curled on her side and Maria draped over the loveseat. "They get almost religious around here about coming back."

"What do you mean?"

"There was kind of a script everybody followed when they were meeting up again afterward. Like, 'Did your family get out okay?' and 'How much water did you get?'" Dean blew air through his teeth, remembering the first person to mistake him for a local and ask him that. _You ain't from here?_ the man said when Dean set him straight. _Well, thank the Lord for volunteers like you, son._ Two days afterward, Dean caught him in an abandoned house and held a knife to his throat. "Are you coming back.'"

"That's why they don't talk to him?" Sam said, unimpressed. "Because he left?"

_Way to take it personally there, Sammy._ "No. Maybe. I don't freaking know," Dean said, giving up grasping for the right words when there were none. "It's just a thing, okay?"

"Yeah, all right," Sam said wearily. "Look, by now the spirit should have long since traded hosts, or at least gone dormant. The more we dig into this, the more I'm thinking it's not a standard issue ghost."

Dean had been thinking the same thing, even though it opened up a whole bunch of unsavory possibilities. "I don't usually credit spooks with an imagination," he admitted, scratching the back of his neck. "They like patterns, they pull the same tricks over and over again. But this thing—"

"It's attached to a person instead of a particular place. And it improvises."

"If I hadn't seen the ectoplasm, I'd still be guessing demon."

"Seriously pissed off spirit with a demon's MO," Sam said. "And Elena said it had no name and no past."

Then it clicked. Ah, fuck.

"That's what hell is," Dean echoed bitterly. "Forgetting what you are."

But Sam had already beaten him there, because there was a lot of resignation and no surprise whatsoever in his quiet, "Yeah. It probably busted out last May."

Dean's fix was the satisfaction of a righteous kill; Sam's was the last puzzle piece slotting into place. But not this time.

"I'm on my way back now," Sam sighed. "See you in a minute."

Dean flipped the phone closed and slid it lightly onto the bedside table.

"James?"

Emma lay on her side, knees tucked up and hands curled in front of her mouth. Her eyes were focused intently on a point just left of his head, and the effect was unnerving. Dean shifted uneasily in his chair. "No, I'm sorry. James isn't here. My name's Dean, remember?"

"Yeah," she said with a vague frown. "I remember."

He glanced around the room for anything that might erase the pained crease between her eyebrows. A stuffed animal, maybe. "Do you need something?"

"I still can't see," she said, eyes flickering like she was trying to prove the words wrong as she said them. "The doctor said it would go away."

Dean had no answer for that other than a lame, "Give it time."

"Hurts," she muttered, kneading her forehead and squeezing her eyes shut.

On the sofa, Maria groaned and stretched her way back to consciousness. "You're awake, ti-bé," she said to Emma. "How's your head?"

"Can I have, like, the legal limit of morphine?"

"Nope," Maria said, adjusting the girl's pillows. "But you can have another monster dose of acetaminophen."

Just then, her purse started ringing and faintly vibrating next to her. She rummaged around in its depths, pulled out a sleek iPhone in a leather case, and frowned at the screen. Dean raised an eyebrow. "Are you going to get that?"

She tapped a button. "Hello?"

There was a brief silence, and then all the blood seemed to drain from her face. "James."

"What's going on?" Emma said, struggling to sit up in bed.

"Speakerphone," Dean murmured.

Maria took one look at Emma and shook her head hard.

"We'll be right back," Dean told Emma, and he hustled Maria into the hall, shutting the door on the kid calling after them. They ducked into the empty room next door, and Maria stroked the iPhone's screen a few times and held it out between them.

"Maria? Are you there, sweetheart?" Wow, the endearment sounded obscene.

"What do you want?" said Maria.

With her brother's voice, the spirit said, "You."

"Oh, this is going somewhere gross," Dean muttered.

The door creaked open quietly, and Sam poked his head in just in time to hear: "How does it feel in that body, I wonder? The span of those hips and the weight of those breasts?"

Sam froze in the doorway. Dean motioned him in, and he let the door shut behind him with barely a click. He came close to listen.

"Give it to me," the thing whispered, "and I'll let your pain in the ass brother go."

"You want to trade James for me?" said Maria.

"You're prettier than he is," the spook said. "And I'm hoping the new model will behave itself. You should hear the names he's calling me, trapped here in his head."

"What makes you think I'd agree to that?"

"Because I grew up with you, Mia." God, Dean could practically hear the smirk. "I could leave you crying on the floor, and you'd still lie to Dad and Emma and the NOPD to cover my ass. You'll do this for me too."

Shaken, Maria rasped, "Things change."

"Family doesn't."

Dean leaned close to the receiver and said, "Take your crazy elsewhere, you sick son of a bitch."

The spirit only laughed. "Allow me to rephrase: give me what I want, or I'll make do with baby sister."

Maria growled, "Don't talk about my sister."

"That's more like it," the spirit said on a satisfied sigh. "You have twelve hours to decide. I'll call again."

And he hung up.

For a long, horrible moment, no one said anything, because what had just happened was way too skeevy for words. Sam and Dean carefully didn't look at each other, and Maria sank into a chair like it was all she could do to keep her shit together.

Sam shifted his weight, hands in his pockets.

"Well. That was fucked up," Dean said.

In Maria's hand, the phone buzzed with a faint dial tone.

"Hey," Dean said, tapping the back of her hand. "It's not going to come to that, okay?"

She flinched, ended the call, and pocketed the phone.

"We can use this," Sam said, pacing a few steps away to give himself room to think. At Maria's startled look, he said, "If he wants a meeting, he's going to have to give us a time and place. It's an engraved invitation to grab him and work an exorcism."

Dean knew he was right. He'd been thinking the exact same thing. Hell, a couple years back he asked a twelve-year-old to play bait in pretty much the same way. But that wasn't Sam. Sam could call hypocrisy and bring up Gordon Walker and dead Voodoo priests all he wanted; he still wasn't supposed to be the gold-plated bastard coming up with shit like that.

But all Dean said was, "You think you can handle it, Maria?"

Looking nauseated, she raised her head from her hands. "You meet him for dinner and a movie if you want. I'm staying here with my sister."

Which was, of course, the sane response. But in this situation, sanity wasn't going to cut it. "I'm pretty sure you're going to be a deal breaker here," Dean pointed out. "If you don't show, he bolts, and we lose him again."

"Then go after him," she said, wrapping her arms around her middle. "I won't do it anymore."

"I'm not sure you understand," Sam said, as gently as he could. "This thing will burn James' life down for shits and giggles, and it might hurt a lot of people doing it."

"I don't give a damn," she whispered, and as a master of self-deception, Dean knew desperate bullshit when he heard it.

He bent down next to her, caught her eyes, and said, "He's your brother."

Anger sparked in her expression, and for a second Dean thought he'd pressed the right button. But then she dropped her eyes, tightened her arms around herself, and said quietly, "Look, I'll take the call. You'll get your time and place, and you can go after him if you want. But please don't ask me to do this."

It was dirty pool, but Dean said it anyway: "And when he comes for Emma, like he threatened?"

She didn't have an answer to that.

"We can protect you, Maria," Sam said, stepping in smoothly to play good cop. "If you come with us, I promise we won't let anything happen to you." She opened her mouth to answer him, but he shook his head and said, "Just think about it, okay? We've got time."

They turned to leave for Emma's room. Maria stayed in her chair, slowly drawing her knees up and hugging them to her chest.

::

::

It was a long twelve hours. The Winchesters spent the time leafing through every ritual, binding spell, and exorcism in their small, mobile library.

"You think a devil's trap will hold him?"

"Punch him a couple times and sit on him. It worked before."

"Foolproof as that plan sounds…"

"Yeah, okay, let's talk contingencies."

They also had twelve hours to watch over the Broussard sisters, which meant front row seats as Emma's sight stubbornly failed to return. Nurses wheeled the kid away for an MRI, and then again for a couple of other acronyms, and eventually Maria stopped saying, "It's just the concussion, sweetie. It'll go away soon enough."

But with lucidity came questions: _Where's James? Why were those men talking about exorcisms? Who _are_ they?_

And then came memories: _He hit you, Maria. He tried to strangle you. His eyes went all weird and there was some kind of black gunk._

"Mia," she said at last, looking very small and totally betrayed. "He would never hurt me. Other people, sure, but… I thought he would never hurt me."

There was a long silence. Dean remembered waking up on a motel room carpet after a solid pistol-whipping. Through the headache, he'd thought, _No way did that shit just happen_. Even on the dock, when he damn well knew better, a childish voice in his head insisted, _He won't shoot. He can't._

Telling the kid the truth wouldn't be anything like giving her a get well soon card and a teddy bear with a heart on its tummy. But sometimes "He was possessed" was actually the good news.

"Do you want to explain?" Dean said to Maria. "Or should we?"

"Give us a minute," she whispered.

"We'll be outside."

In the hallway, Sam leaned against the wall and said under his breath, "We don't usually have to watch this part."

"What, the collateral damage?"

Sam let his head thunk back against the plaque marked ROOM 314. "Rolling out of town before the falling action has its perks."

Dean blew air through his teeth. "Amen to that."

::

::

Emma had long since cried herself to sleep, and the murky light of an early sunset was shading the room in reds and purples when Dean's cell phone rang. "Hey, Miss Elena."

On the floor, Sam looked up from his book, and there was something puppyish in his expression. Older women tended to fuss over him; maybe Elena's careful distance had hit a nerve.

"You free to talk?" she said.

"Sure. Hang on a minute." Dean got to his feet and took his call to the empty room across the hall, hoping for some privacy.

Maria was pacing in there. "I need to leave a message for J. T. Broussard," she said very firmly. "As soon as his feet hit the dock, tell him there's been an emergency at home. Yes. His daughter. Yes. Here's the number."

Dean moved on down the hall before she realized he was there. Room 322 stood open. "All right, Miss Elena," he said, shutting the door behind him. "What's going on?"

"I thought you should know," Elena said slowly, "that people are talking."

Dean bit back a smartass remark. The lady was a conjurer in her sixties; she could be cryptic if she damn well pleased. "About what, ma'am?"

"It seems like I got every hunter, medium, and occultist in the city ringing me up and asking me what I know about the Winchester boys," she said.

She wouldn't appreciate it if he demanded to know what she'd said. Instead he asked, "Do they know we're in town?"

"Honey, think where you are," she said patiently.

They were in the most haunted city in the country, he realized. The supernatural capital of the United States. Elena once told Dean that if he wanted to stitch a life together out of the hunter's world and the daylight world, New Orleans was the place to do it. The freaks waved their flags in the open here.

And they gossiped. Maybe someone recognized the nosy young men with the hotass car and set the wires humming.

"So what's got everybody's panties in a twist?" Dean said on a sigh.

"Your brother," she said flatly. "There's a lot of folks uneasy about him. Months worth of rumors are following that boy around."

"Well, you can tell those ignorant assholes that my brother is—"

"Do not raise your voice to me, young man," she said sharply.

"Sorry," he groused. "Sorry. Keep going."

She paused to let him feel the weight of his infraction. Then, regally, she continued, "One little hedgewitch asked me if it was true you had a gun could kill demons."

He manufactured a scornful laugh.

"Yeah, that's what I told her."

"All right," Dean said, scratching irritably at the nape of his neck. "Thanks for calling."

"You're welcome," she said, and seemed to mean it. "Take care of those girls, you hear? And be careful."

Dean pressed END, tucked the phone in his pocket, and headed back to 314. Sam met him in the hallway, just outside the door.

"What did Elena say?"

"That we're infamous, and no one likes your face," Dean said.

Sam blinked, translated, and sighed. "You'd think I traveled with an entourage of imps waving pitchforks," he muttered. "Anything useful about our guy?"

"No, just the heads-up."

The puppyish look came back for an encore, and underneath it Dean could practically see Sam mentally weighing the next words out of his mouth. As usual, he decided to damn the torpedoes. "Have you talked to her about your deal at all?"

Dean would be lying if he said it hadn't occurred to him. But a few other things had occurred to him in quick succession and put paid to the idea. "No," he said firmly. "And you're not going to, either."

Sam skipped right past surprise and went straight to pissy frustration. "Why not?"

Because Dean had already come in from the dark once, and she'd looked at him different.

"We've already got people calling her to ask if you're the Anti-Christ," Dean said quietly, casting glances up and down the hall. "You want to advertise the unholy resurrection shit?"

Sam stared at him like he'd just single-handedly lowered the average IQ of the whole building by ten points. "Dean. Three months. We are way past that."

Dean chewed that over, nodding, and came to a conclusion. "Tell her, and I'll shave your eyebrows off while you sleep."

He pushed past Sam into the room, and he left him standing out in the hall, fuming.

::

::

At one-thirty in the morning, Emma woke up in pain "like the migraine to end all migraines," and she'd already hit her safe limit of drugs. Maria tried to soothe her and pet her, but the kid rolled away from her touch. Big sister had offered too much empty reassurance lately, Dean figured.

After a few minutes, Emma reached for the bedside table and pawed across it until her fingers closed on a ratty pink paperback. She held it out to Dean, who was sprawled in the chair next to her, and she said, "Distract me?"

He definitely did not freeze like a cornered rabbit, whatever Sam said later. He was just a little surprised.

"I've got it," Sam said when he didn't reply, sitting forward in his chair.

But Dean thought he understood. _You sound like him_.

Yeah, that wasn't creepy at all.

"As long as it's not the freaking Babysitters' Club," Dean grumbled, reaching out and taking the book from her. He turned it over in his hands and read, "_To Kill a Mockingbird_."

"My first crush was Jem Finch," Emma said through a tight smile.

"I'd have thought you'd be an Atticus girl."

"You've read it before?"

"Nah. But Gregory Peck is the man. All right, um." Pages whispered under his fingers. "From the beginning?"

"Chapter eight, if it's all the same to you."

"Sure thing."

The silence in the room seemed to yawn open suddenly into a great, expectant space Dean had to fill. Sam and Maria were an unwelcome audience, but asking them to leave would be too much like admitting to stage fright. He glared, and they both became very interested in their magazines. So Dean cleared his throat, thumbed through well-loved pages, and settled deeper in the chair. With awkward pauses and no particular grace, he started to read. "For reasons unfathomable to the most esperi—" he licked his lips, "experienced prophets of Maycomb County, autumn turned to winter that year."

Emma's blank eyes closed, leaking tears that dripped messily and stuck her eyelashes together. She breathed in carefully, breathed out.

The reading got easier. Once he'd caught the rhythm, Dean couldn't stop himself throwing in the occasional "Ha, the Finch-man is snarky" or "whoa, there, dropping an n-bomb." But by the time Scout Finch huddled under Jem's arm and watched a house burn, the words came sure and steady, and Emma breathed in time with them.

"You awake, kiddo?" Dean said hoarsely at the end of a paragraph.

She didn't reply.

Across the room, Maria mouthed, "Thank you."

Dean shrugged out from under her thanks, and then he reached out with one foot and prodded Sam's knee. As a peace offering, he invited his brother to laugh at him. "I think I just read a bedtime story."

Sam's expression said, _You're still an idiot_. But his eyebrows amended: _You're an idiot with redeeming qualities_.

Perched on her knee, Maria's cell phone buzzed and vibrated. "Unfamiliar number," she said. "I think it's him."

It was. She and Sam and Dean huddled together to take the call.

"Decision time," the spirit said, crackly over the speakerphone.

Off Sam's steady nod, Maria said: "Where do I meet you?"

"That's my girl." He gave her an address on Annunciation Street, close to the river. "Come alone. Leave the hunters with Emma. If I even suspect they've followed you, I'll shoot you on sight."

Sam gave another nod, and Maria took a deep breath and said, "Before I do this, I want a show of good faith."

"Such as?"

"Let me talk to my brother. Call it proof of life."

There was a long silence in which everyone stared intently at the phone. Then they heard a soft choking noise, and a very different tone of voice said, "What the fuck do you think you're doing, Maria?"

For the first time, Dean halfway understood how Emma could mistake him for James.

"Are you hurt?" Maria said.

"If you go through with this—I swear to God—don't you fucking dare—"

They heard a scuffling sound, heavy breathing, and the rap of the phone hitting the floor. A moment later, the spirit was panting on the line: "You have half an hour. Then I come for your sister, and I take her skin for a joy ride and sink this town into terror it hasn't known since—"

Sam pressed End Call, shaking his head irritably. "They always monologue."

Dean yanked his jacket on and patted his car keys in his pocket. "Let's get moving."

"Wait," Maria said anxiously. "Just wait." The hand she held up was trembling faintly, and Dean thought that maybe not all of the adrenaline shakes were terror.

"What is it?" Sam said.

"I'm coming with you," she said, looking queasy. "Just give me two seconds."

And she ducked into the bathroom. Sam and Dean exchanged glances. Nervous puking was always awkward.

But a moment later she emerged with a fresh coat of red lipstick. "Okay."

_Oh, for Christ's sake._ Dean angled his are-you-crazy eyebrow at her. "Now we can go?"

She turned her face up to him earnestly, as if to remind him just how much she was trusting him and Sam here. "Now we can go."

Dean gestured gallantly to the door Sam was holding open. "After you."

Maria gave her sister a last, worried look, and then she led the way down the hall.

Just before he followed her out, Sam paused and shook his head at Dean. "And you thought you were going to parades tonight."

::

::

They rode downtown through the detritus of Thoth and Bacchus. St. Charles Avenue was littered with plastic bags and beer cans, pressure-washed to the gutters by the city's cleanup crews. Broken strings of beads crunched under the wheels of Maria's Chevy Malibu.

"Remember, don't look for us," Sam said with his knees hunched up in the passenger seat. "And don't try to talk to us."

"If he tries any hostage bullshit," Dean said, perched on the edge of the backseat and leaning between the front armrests, "go limp like you fainted. It's really hard to drag a human shield."

"Keep him talking, and keep him from touching you for as long as possible."

"And if it all goes to hell, run. Get back to the hospital and call the number we gave you for Bobby Singer."

Maria nodded along, knuckles whitening on the steering wheel.

Sam gave her a curious, sideways glance. "Why'd you decide to do it?"

"Because he told me not to."

They parked in the lonely shadows of an old, rusted-out factory near the river. Maria started walking, heading straight for Annunciation, and the Winchesters took a more roundabout route through abandoned buildings and empty streets. This district cleared out at night; shipping cranes and conveyor belts went still, port authority workers went home, and the river rushed by untroubled.

"What do you figure our odds are?" Sam muttered.

"With the whole thing hinging on a civilian? Seventy percent chance of catastrophe," Dean said. Under Sam's raised eyebrow, he shrugged. "Dad did the math once."

They kept pace with Maria from a distance, and they watched her slowly approach a plain, sheet metal-constructed warehouse. After a moment's hesitation, she shouldered open the small side door. A few head jerks and hand gestures, and Sam and Dean melted apart in the darkness, Dean following Maria, Sam looking for a back way in.

She'd left the door open, as instructed, and he slipped through it without touching anything. Inside, great, pale shapes loomed in the dimness. His eyes adjusted, and he realized what he was looking at.

Floats.

Eighteen feet high, fourteen feet wide, they stood in patient ranks. The closest one was covered in giant, pearly flowers two feet across, each glimmering at the edges with silver leaf. "Krewe of Orpheus" said the painted plywood title card propped nearby. They rode tomorrow night, he remembered.

_I'm in a John Woo movie_, he thought, allowing himself a quick grin. _It's the end of Hard Target, and I am Van Damme, bitch._

He passed under one float's prow—a giant, luminous jester's head grinning manically under its bell cap. Oh, Sam was going to love that.

Shoes scraped on the concrete. Dean peered around the corner of a float made up like a steam engine, and he raised his eyebrows.

A massive, brightly-colored dragon glared down at him with yellow eyes and a forked tongue running out. Holy shit, the thing had to be more than a hundred feet long; you could fit a person in its open mouth. In its shadow, Maria stood ramrod straight, jacket hugged around her in the chill.

Ten yards from her was close enough. Dean readied his sawed-off and stood motionless.

It felt too early to worry; something told him they had a little while until the spirit's half-hour timetable was up. It was too early to worry that they'd been made, too early to think that any second now he was going to walk up and shoot their bait in the face.

The minutes ticked by, and Dean's senses tuned to the silence until his every breath sounded like a wind tunnel and his pulse crashed too loud in his ears. He breathed through it, reciting the plan in his head, relishing the thrum of adrenaline in his blood.

Heavy footsteps echoed. Boots. The sound was hard to place in the weird acoustics of a warehouse.

Dean's pulse spiked, but he didn't move a muscle.

"Hello, Maria," said James' voice, nowhere and everywhere. "You've left your white knights behind?"

"They're with Emma," she told the empty space around her, looking over both shoulders. "Enforcing visiting hours."

The urge to go sidling through floats and get a bead on that sick bastard was tugging at Dean's nerves. All of Dad's training screamed: Find it and kill it.

But that wasn't Dean's role here. He kept Maria in sight, and he held his position.

"I'm not going to hurt you," the spirit said smoothly. For a given value of hurt, it was probably true, Dean thought. _Trap you in a little corner of your own damn brain_ fell under a different claims category on the insurance.

"Where are you?" Maria demanded. From thirty feet away, Dean could see her shaking.

"I'm coming, sweetheart," the spirit said as though reassuring a child. "I'm coming."

A shotgun blast echoed to the high ceiling.

Dean took off running, following the sound of the agonized screaming and Sam bellowing, "Stay down! I said stay down!"

At the feet of a hulking Trojan horse, hung with painted shields and wreaths of gilded flowers, James was rolling on the floor, arms raised painfully in surrender. He'd taken a round of rock salt to the chest, and Dean remembered how that could knock you on your ass. Sam stood over him, sawed-off at the ready.

"Nice shot, Sammy," Dean said, digging in his pocket for the cable ties.

Sam nodded modestly, breathing deep through his nose to quiet the adrenaline rush. "Sorry, James," he said with a grimace. "I don't think you're getting the deposit back on the tux."


	4. Chapter 4

It was a ten minute drive to West End, the northwestern corner of Orleans Parish on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain. The whole area—marina, two yacht clubs, restaurants, and condos—had been pretty much wiped out in '05, and for the most part it was still nothing but ruins and thick shadows. At this time of night, there wasn't a soul around.

The Broussards had already rebuilt their boat house on the jetty, not twenty yards from the water. It stood alone in a row of gutted shells, freshly painted and summery. No one was going to hear James scream out here.

Sam and Dean hauled him out of the trunk, got him through the door, and dropped him on the dock where a sturdy old Boston Whaler was tied up. A little rearranging, and they carried him up a spiral stairwell and through a cheerful blue door. He had the sense not to struggle; he just watched them through cold, narrowed eyes.

Inside was a swanky kitchen and bar, but no furniture to speak of. In the bedroom a devil's trap and a thick ring of salt were ruining the carpet. Sam had salted the doorways too—even the sliding doors out to the balcony overlooking the harbor.

"Nice view for an exorcism," Dean said. There was a sunken sailboat down there, too costly to dredge up after the storm. Its mast jutted up silver in the moonlight. "Cool."

Sam did the honors binding James' hands and feet to the chair limbs. Dean checked his knots.

"You probably shouldn't be here for this," Sam said softly to Maria, who stood with her arms hugged around her in the doorway.

She just shook her head.

"All right," Dean said. "Go for it."

Sam ripped the duct tape from James' mouth. "Hey, there. Let's get started."

A slow, crazed little smirk spread across his face. "You have nothing to threaten me with," he breathed.

"No?" Sam said. "Crux sancta sit mihi lux non draco…"

It was like they'd shoved a cattle prod into his ribs and let it sear. The spirit twisted and writhed with tendon-popping strength inside its borrowed skin. It cursed them in languages Dean didn't even recognize, and it hissed and spit like a wild animal.

But it didn't go anywhere.

James' head snapped back hard, jaw strained open wide.

"Is that supposed to happen?" Maria murmured behind Dean.

"It'll probably get a lot worse."

Sam gave up on the Benedictine text and went for some Rituale Romanum: "Deus caeli, deus terrae, humiliter majestati gloriae tuae supplicamus ut ab omni infernalium spirituum potestate…"

A scream ripped out of James' throat, loud and sudden enough to make Maria flinch.

Sam kept going. He got to the end, started again. James seized and shuddered, but there were no pyrotechnics. No mysterious winds rose up. The lights didn't even flicker.

This wasn't protocol for ghosts or demons. Dean was getting a little pissed off at the lack of professional courtesy here.

"Hold on," he said as Sam sucked in a breath.

In the sudden silence, James' head flopped down onto his chest. Maria started for him, and Dean held out a staying hand. He nodded at Sam's left forearm, where he knew the sleeve hid a messy burn scar. "Binding mark?"

_Not likely_, Sam's expression said. "We'll see."

He stepped carefully over the salt line, and he reached for James' shoulder.

"Jesus fuck," James tried to say, and it came out as more of a whimper. His head lolled back on his neck, and black streaked his cheeks like tear tracks. "You want to just hook me up to a fucking car battery, you sick motherfucker?"

Maria took another step, but this time she glanced over for permission. Dean nodded, and she went to James with a cool cloth and a water bottle. "Small sips," she said, wiping the black from his face. "And be polite to the professionals, please."

Meanwhile, Sam rolled up James' sleeves and opened his shirt. The scattershot gouges of rock salt stood out red on his pale skin, and he had a meat tag tattooed on his ribs and an Army eagle on his chest. There was no binding mark.

"Quit feeling me up and get rid of the fucking thing," James snapped at Sam.

"James," Maria said, catching his chin gently. "Say fuck one more time. Maybe it'll help."

Sam stepped out of the salt circle and headed through the doorway with a quick, follow-me head jerk. Dean followed him. It was conference time in the kitchen.

"I've been thinking," Sam said, turning around and leaning against the counter. Oh, crap. _I've been thinking_ usually ended in _we should try something unorthodox and probably unnecessary in order to satisfy my curiosity_. Most recently, it ended in _fairy tales_, and the sooner that weird-ass case was forgotten, the better.

Sam swallowed and said, "Are we sure we want to do this just yet?"

"Meaning what?"

"Think about it, Dean," Sam said, fidgety with whatever idea he had in his head. "If we're right about this thing busting out of the gates last May, then what we've got in there is a soul that escaped from hell."

"Yeah. Give it a cookie, send it back."

But there was something fervent in Sam's face now. "Think about what it could tell us."

Oh, yes, because the last time a demon told Dean about hell's inner workings, it brought sunshine and rainbows into his life. "Sam," Dean said testily. "It could tell us hell is John Mayer played on loop forever and ever. I don't need the travel brochure, okay? Just let it go."

"What if this could help you?"

"I said let it go."

"Get back in here," James yelled from the bedroom. "Come on, you sadistic bastards, let's get this shit done."

::

::

They tried for hours.

Sam read himself hoarse, going through mantras and yajnas from the Vedic and Tantric traditions, verses from the Qur'an, and every rite in Dad's journal.

Each time, the spirit took over when Sam started saying the words, thrashing and seizing and mocking whatever religion they threw at it. And in the end, James' body went limp, and the next time he raised his head he was himself. When he caught his breath, it was to call them useless cocksuckers and tell Maria to dry her eyes.

The spirit was more polite.

"They tell stories about you," he said. Black pooled at the corners of his eyes and ran down his cheeks.

"You guys shoot the shit over beers in hell?" Sam said. "That's nice."

"Lesser demons fear you," the spirit went on. "How many have you cast out?"

"About to be one more."

Grimly, the thing smiled. "How many bodies have you burned in unmarked graves? How many sweet, pretty sisters will never know what happened to their brothers?"

"You've burned through more than one since you got out, I'll bet. Was Sonia Torres the first, or was she just a little fun on the side?"

"He wasn't kind to me when I wore her," the spirit said to Maria. "He's not a kind man, your brother." With infinite patience, it closed James' eyes. "Has he told you what it felt like to shoot someone in the head?"

Silence.

"It's God's own heroin," it said in perfect imitation of James' gruff intonation. Then, with almost religious fervor: "He saw the pink mist."

Dean made an impatient noise. "As much fun as the armchair psych—"

"You know the feeling."

"Yeah," Dean said, leaning into his space. "I do."

The spirit just smiled, slow and satisfied.

"I'm glad we had this talk," Sam said. "Enjoy whatever circle of hell you come from."

"I told you, you have nothing to threaten me with."

"Why's that? You think you'll just crawl back out?"

James leaned forward as far as his bonds allowed. "Yes, and let me tell you exactly how I did it," he mocked. "Detailed directions to the back door."

"Regna terrae, cantate Deo," Sam said, and his lip curled angrily. "Psallite Domino qui fertis super caelum caeli ad Orientem Ecce dabit voci Suae vocem virtutis, tribuite virtutem Deo."

"What's the last man standing going to do, I wonder? You bought him his life," he said to Dean, "but that was no great favor. I know what he has to look forward to. It's only a few months now, isn't it? Maybe less."

"Longer than you, douchebag," Dean said.

"You'll have the road and the guilt, Sam. It sent Daddy a little sideways. What will it do to you?"

"Deus caeli, Deus terrae, humiliter majestati gloriae Tuae supplicamus ut ab omni infernalium spirituum potestate—"

"If you like," the spirit said through gritted teeth, "you can peer into real people's lives like shop windows. It won't be enough. You'll forget the rhythm of small talk. Forget the shape of words in your mouth."

"That's poetic," Dean sneered.

"—laqueo, deceptione et nequitia, omnis fallaciae, libera nos, Domine."

The spirit gasped, back arched and neck twisted painfully. "Do it long enough," he choked out, "and you'll wake up one day with no idea who you are. No one will know well enough to tell you."

"Vade, Satana," Sam drowned him out. "Vade, Satana!"

"Long way down the road," the thing panted with glittering fever eyes, "when you meet a man with black eyes who says he was once your brother, will you cast him back into the pit?"

"That's enough." And Sam turned on his heel, shoved Dad's journal at Dean's chest, and strode out into the kitchen.

The spirit yelled after him, "How long does he have to burn because of you?"

Dean set him steaming and gasping in holy water. "You, shut up. Sam, what the hell are you—"

Sam burst back through the door with the Colt leveled at James' center mass. "You have five seconds to tell me how you crawled topside."

The entire room went very, very still.

"Four," Sam said.

The spirit breathed in slow and shaky, and its eyes burned madly.

"Three."

James looked strung out. No, he looked… rapturous. Something was way off here, Dean knew; there was something they were missing, some big piece—

"Two."

"Maybe he deserves it," James said quietly.

Sam thumbed back the hammer. Maria threw herself in a stupid direction, and Dean caught her around the waist on instinct. She squirmed and fought and tried to elbow him in the ribs, but that was too damn bad. You didn't let civilians jump into the line of fire, not even to shield their dumbass brothers.

Besides, Sam was bluffing.

_You shot her._

She was a smartass!

…Sam was probably bluffing. And it wasn't going to work. Holy crap, they'd been going at this wrong from the beginning.

"Sam, he wants you to shoot him."

Held tight to his body, Maria stopped struggling. And without taking his eyes off James, Sam twitched his head in Dean's direction. "What?"

"He's done nothing but talk shit since we grabbed him," Dean said. "Fucker practically dared us."

A muscle jumped next to Sam's nose. "That doesn't make any sense."

"Look at him, man," Dean insisted, and with the fading light in James' eyes and the slow curl of his lip, he knew he was right. "It's suicide by cop."

For a long moment, Sam held the gun steady.

"My brother's in there," Maria said, fingers tight around Dean's wrist and forearm. "Please, my little brother's in there."

James' face twisted into something ugly and unrecognizable. "He dies regardless," he spat. "You cannot wrench me free."

"You sure about that?" Dean snarled, flinging holy water across his face.

The spirit bellowed his way through the pain. As it passed, he shook his head, flinging droplets of holy water, and then he tucked his chin to his chest. Muted, his voice rumbled up in a chant as low and rhythmic as a prayer.

"I am the sinner cursed to roam the earth until He comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead." Slowly he looked up at them, hollow-eyed and stripped of everything but hate. "I have lived more lifetimes than you have days, I have walked five continents, sailed every ocean, and bled under banners forgotten by history. I am he who drove the nails at Golgotha, and you will send me to my rest."

Maria went white, and Sam and Dean glanced at each other.

"Well, shit," said Dean.

::

::

"Of course we couldn't send it to hell," Sam seethed, leaning his elbows on the kitchen island and letting his head fall into his hands. "The crux of the curse is that it's stuck on this plane forever."

"What does that mean?" Maria asked him stiffly, wrapped in a blanket and keeping the island between her and the Winchesters.

"Wandering souls have supposedly committed some great sin," Sam explained, gruff with frustration and forty-eight straight hours awake. "They're cursed by God, forced to roam the earth without rest until Judgment Day."

"Like the Wandering Jew?"

"That was the anti-Semitic, medieval Catholic version, yeah. This one seems to be a living soul skipping from body to body, unable to move on to any kind of afterlife."

"Except now he knows we've got the Colt," Dean realized, leaning against the counter. "That's who's been asking questions about us—he was doing his homework."

"He let us capture him," Sam sighed.

"So what are our options at this point?" said Maria.

"Honestly?" Dean said. "Nothing you're going to like."

"I didn't like the gun pointed at him," she said sharply, and Sam glanced up from his notes with no kind of apology in his face.

Dean stood up straight, taking a step between Maria and Sam, and he tried to be the practical one here. "Either we kill it while it's got a body, or we force it out in the open."

"How do we force it out?"

"We probably don't," Sam said, blunt and tired of comforting lies. "I don't know what another exorcism will do to James. His death might free the thing before the ritual could."

"The curse," she said, glancing between them. "What if we break the curse?"

_Sure_, Dean thought, _and after that, we'll put Humpty-Dumpty back together and make the earth turn backwards_. "We can look into it."

But Maria heard the doubt, not the words, and she tucked the blanket closer around her like she meant to disappear in it.

From the next room, James yelled with his shredded voice, "Who stole my fucking sippy cup? This is bullshit."

Maria closed her eyes, and when she opened them again she stood up straight and gathered James' water bottle and bendy straw. She closed the bedroom door behind her.

Left alone, the Winchesters regarded each other across the kitchen.

"Dude," Dean said, taking up a position leaning against the counter. "You want to tell me what just happened in there?"

"I thought we had a lead," Sam said unrepentantly.

Dean cocked an eyebrow. "You nearly killed the bastard for mouthing off."

That earned him a scathing look. "I'm sorry you're uncomfortable with the way I'm trying to save your life."

"It's not that," Dean said, letting his crossed arms drop. "I mean, it is, but... It's not like you, man—going off half-cocked. Especially not on a case like this. We've been where they are, remember?"

"Yeah, we have," Sam snapped. "And you didn't know when to let go then either."

"The hell does that mean?"

Sam pressed his lips into a thin line. He'd thought he was so fucking close, Dean realized. Just like the last lead, and the one before that. "Dean," he demanded, "do you seriously believe we can stop this thing without killing the host?"

Dean made a barely audible noise that amounted to _No, not really_.

Sam glared, and waited.

"Hey, I'll keep trying," Dean said, hands spread. "But no."

"So why do you want me to?"

_Because I want you to be my brother again. Just 'cause._

Dean consciously relaxed his shoulders and let his head drop low. Deep breath. Quick exhale, then he looked Sam in the eyes. "Because you're the one who might actually figure out how."

The edge of anger in Sam's glare slowly softened into resignation. Dean thought they were back on the same page when Sam's bitchface made a brief appearance, and a second later he knew it when Sam nodded tiredly. "What the hell. It's this or parades, right?"

::

::

"You want to break a two thousand year old curse?" Miss Elena said, and even over the phone Dean could hear her raised eyebrows.

"It wasn't my idea," he said.

"A curse that old, it's got to be strong and permanent as a mountain to have stuck this long. You don't break something like that. You satisfy its terms."

"Well, since we can't bring on the apocalypse, that's pretty much out."

"Then you got to work around it," she muttered thoughtfully. Dean could picture her fierce frown of concentration, like she was staring down the mildewed remains of her curtains or preparing to bust down a door swollen shut in its frame. "It's a living soul, which complicates things. It's going to have its heels dug in good. Ain't coming free like a spirit, ain't going to leave polite like the lwa. Now there's a couple traditions—"

"Miss Elena," Dean interrupted as delicately as he could. "I'm going to give you to Sam, okay? This is more his department."

There was a nervous pause. "I don't know."

Dean bit back a sigh. "Please."

She waited long enough to make it clear that she was doing him a favor by talking to his demon king brother, and then she said, "All right."

Sam took the phone—"Good evening, ma'am"—and he settled on the floor with twenty pounds of paper spread around him. "It wasn't my idea. I agree, yeah, but all the lore I've found says that—yeah. Yeah. No, we've tried that already. Okay, let me give you what we've got so far."

Half an hour later, he'd sucked down three cups of coffee, called half his contacts list, and come up with a plan.

It sounded about as promising as luring the cursed soul out with candy.

"We borrow from a tradition that doesn't cast spirits to hell, it casts them into a solid object," Sam said, talking too fast with the exaggerated gestures of the over-caffeinated. "Like the legend of Koschi the Deathless, whose life was inside the thing inside the roc's egg inside the—yeah. But the text would have to be—"

"Sam," Dean interrupted.

"Some kind of syncretic—"

"Sam."

"What?"

"Are you talking about a custom ritual?"

"That is exactly what I'm talking about."

Candy. Candy would be better. "McGyver an exorcism, and you could turn the poor bastard's head around on his neck."

"Our other options end the same way."

Point.

Dean leaned over Sam's shoulder and toed a few sheets of paper aside.

"No," Sam snapped, shooing him. "Don't touch that. Don't…hover."

And he went back to sketching symbols and jotting down phrases. Rendered briefly useless, Dean wandered into the bedroom where James sat, mercifully passed out. On the balcony, obscured by the moon's glare on the sliding glass doors, Maria sat cross-legged, looking out at the harbor. A cigarette glowed in one hand, and her finishing school posture had melted into a slouch.

Dean slid the glass door open and shut it quietly behind him. "How are you holding up?"

He could see she'd been crying—not the patient slide of tears Dean had seen on and off all day, but the kind messy enough to leave a few wisps of hair stuck to her cheek and some lingering sniffles. But she gave him a smile so easy and meaningless he suspected it was reflex. "Have a seat?"

Dean had nothing better to do. He sank down on the smooth, worn wood, facing her with his back to the railing.

"You're trying very hard to save a man you think is a jackass," she said, calm and thoughtful as though her interest was purely academic.

Dean raised an eyebrow. "You want us to stop?"

"I hated him for a long time," she whispered. "I think I still do, just a little." On her exhale Dean caught the sickly sweet scent of cloves. Girl didn't even smoke real cigarettes.

Dean peered through the glass at James' bent head. "Ain't the same as not giving a damn."

"Maybe not," she said softly. "I spent years telling my father that the drinking and arrests and rough edges were just bravado. If we ever really needed him, if it ever really mattered, James would come through." Her free hand curled at the base of her throat. "They say we sleep sound at night because rough men do violence on our behalf."

George Orwell, likely apocryphal. Dad had liked that quote. "Then you needed him, and it mattered?"

"Then came the storm." She inspected the cigarette butt, put it out against the railing, and tossed it into the black water below. "The whole family evacuated to my apartment in Raleigh – I was in vet school up there. Two weeks in, we still didn't even know how badly we'd been hit, and James just… disappeared. Took all of my cash and left his phone."

"How long?"

"He sent Emma a letter from Fort Benning three months later."

Dean whistled. But he'd heard worse and seen worse. Besides, she was telling him this for a reason. "You still give a damn."

Troubled, she murmured, "Why do you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why are you here?" she said. "You don't even like James. I don't even like James."

"We've been over this," he said impatiently. "It's what my family does."

She gave him a guarded, sideways look. "You wanted something from the… the wandering soul. And what it said about you burning because of Sam—he nearly shot my brother over it."

So this was about his nefarious ulterior motives. Fine, then. "Once it started talking, we thought it might know something that could save my skin," Dean admitted. "It's moot now."

She had the decency to look him in the eye when she said, "I've seen 'Doctor Faustus' on stage a couple of times. And I know every word of 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia.'"

"Then you're on the right track," Dean said.

She nodded in Sam's general direction. "For his life?"

Dean nodded.

The hopeless smile made another appearance. "Who do I talk to about Emma's eyes?"

He just shook his head, and they smiled bleakly at each other in the darkness.

"So you didn't come here looking for information," she said at last. "Why, then?"

"Someone has to."

"Rough men," she said quietly. And she looked into his eyes like she'd never seen anything quite like him.

Sam slid the glass door open, held up a handful of fuzzy-edged notebook paper, and announced with frazzled pride: "There is a faint possibility that this might actually work."

::

::

"You're going to trap the cursed soul in _that_?" Maria said, standing in the bedroom doorway. "You don't have something appropriately mystical in your trunk?"

Backlit by the sliding glass doors, Sam passed the porcelain Siamese cat from hand to hand. Its oversized blue eyes stared up at him mournfully. "This works."

Dean smirked. He'd found the cat on the bathroom sink, and he'd known immediately it was made to house evil.

"I would like to register my doubts about the mission objective, y'all," James said, swaying glassy-eyed in the chair. "Starting with the fact that it's retarded."

"Thank you," Maria said. "That was constructive."

"Bullet would be quicker," he slurred. "Don't want to die looking like the fuckin'… fuckin' kid from _The Exorcist_. You know, puffy."

"Shut up, James," she said softly.

He turned his face up earnestly. "Want it to be quick."

No one answered him.

When everything else had been set up, Maria disappeared briefly and returned to the bedroom with a fresh coat of lipstick.

This time, Dean understood. "War paint, huh?"

She nodded, and she stepped gingerly across the salt lines and kissed James on the cheek.

"Ave Maria, gratia plena," she murmured to him. "Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus..." When he held his silence, she whispered, "Please."

"Yeah, okay," he said, hoarse with exhausted fear. "Et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesu. Fucking hell. Ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae."

"Amen," they said together.

She stepped back to Dean's side, and James' lips kept moving silently. Ave, ave.

"Sancte Michael Archangele," Sam began. "Defende nos in proelio contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto præsidium."

Good call, Dean thought. Ease into it with a deprecatory exorcism; get bossy with the bad guy later.

Sam's voice rose in a slow crescendo of Latin, warning and threatening and finally commanding, and James clenched his fists until veins showed in his arms. Deep breath and a refrain—_Sancte Michael Archangele_—and Sam switched to unfamiliar words in what Dean thought was Aramaic, loud and deliberate.

There was a sound like indrawn breath, and a rush of cold air swept the room. Sam shook his stupid hair out of his eyes and slipped smoothly into another language—Greek this time. James strained against the ropes, and Dean heard the chair creak with the pressure.

"Sancte Michael Archangele," Sam repeated. And then he started carefully pronouncing words Dean didn't even recognize.

James' head snapped back, his mouth open and gasping. The line of his throat undulated once, and an agonized keening escaped him. The chair's joints squealed, and Dean wrapped a cautious hand around the grip of the Colt.

Sam kept talking.

Chill fingers of air crept into Dean's three layers of clothing, and next to him, Maria shivered uncontrollably. Salt grains scattered in the wind.

"_Fuck!_"

James arched up impossibly, anchored only at his wrists and ankles. The thing was coming up, coming out—riding a great, bellowing scream like a war cry. Keep talking, Sammy.

"Adjuramus te!" Sam shouted. "_Adjuramus te!_"

The sliding doors blew inward in an explosion of glass.

Dean hit the floor, dragging Maria down to the lee of him. He felt quick, stinging cuts in the hands covering his head; he hunched his shoulders, curled his legs up. With a pretty noise like a disturbed chandelier, the glass settled around him.

"Sam?"

A force tugged Dean sideways and dragged him across the glass shards. He hit the wall hard enough to knock him breathless. He heard another thud across the room—Sam.

"Son of a bitch," Dean gasped out, and through a burst of pain he rolled to his knees with the Colt drawn.

In the ruined devil's trap, James stood over the wreckage of the chair, one armrest still swinging from his wrist. Pinned close to his body, Maria strained on tiptoe. His forearm was levered hard against her throat.

"There she is," James said. His eyes were fixed lovingly on the Colt. "No, don't move," he added, levering Maria's chin to a painful angle.

On his knees by the opposite wall, Sam stopped in mid-scramble for his journal.

"I told you it would come to this," James said, eyes alight. "You will give me what I want."

He had Maria in a classic lock. He could snap her neck whenever he felt like it.

"Great, fine, you win," Dean said. Carefully, he got to his feet, and he kept the Colt pointed right between James' eyes. "Tell you what, you let the lady go and we'll trade you a nice bullet in the head."

Maria pressed her eyes shut tight.

"Do it," the cursed soul hissed at Dean. "You have your shot. Take it."

It was the smart thing, even if it wouldn't be pretty. The cursed soul had no compelling reason not to kill Maria, who was probably eighty percent of the reason no one had shot James yet.

"She's having trouble breathing," the thing reminded him quietly.

And that settled it, right there. Dean couldn't let him win.

"You take me," he said. "Take me and we'll go."

Everyone else in the room nearly had an aneurysm.

"Dean, what the hell are you—"

"Shut up, Sam," Dean barked.

"Why would you offer me that?" James hissed, tightening his grip on Maria. He looked suspicious, but very definitely interested. Oh, this was going to be easy.

"What's another three months?" Dean said, smiling darkly.

"You're not seriously—"

"Sam, shut up, or I will shut you up." Dean was aware he probably looked manic and a little unhinged, which was going to get him exactly what he wanted, but wasn't helping his case with Sam. Buzzed on the exhilaration of _Holy fuck, I might pull this mother off_, he fixed a pained smile just below Sam's collarbone, far too low to meet his eyes, and said, "At least it'll mean something this way."

Saving throw. He just had to hope Sam would go long for it.

Sam followed his gaze, and Dean saw the moment when he figured out what this shiny new plan hinged on. His expression melted into something even more incensed.

Good. Message received. Let's roll.

"Your word is worth nothing," the cursed soul said.

"You've got a hostage," Dean pointed out with a shrug. "What do you need my word for?"

"But why?" James breathed, ecstatic and disturbingly childlike.

Dean gave him a flat look. "Going once."

"Why?" he whined.

"Going twice."

"Yes!" James shouted. "I accept, yes!"

"Lovely." Dean lowered the gun. "How do we do this?"

Impatient, James snapped, "You've dealt with devils before."

That stopped Dean in his tracks for a good two seconds. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

"It's the only way," James said feverishly. "Only way."

"Of course it is," Dean muttered to himself.

"Come to me."

Dean motioned to Maria, who was still pinned close to James' body and very much in the way. "Logistical problem there."

"I won't let her go," James said immediately. "Come here."

Fuck it. No backing out now.

Dean lowered the Colt, took a step forward, and came close enough to Maria to hear her choked litany of "Please. Please. Please."

He leaned past her, felt her breath on his skin, and then he was breathing James' air—close enough to see the fine details of the lipstick print on his cheek. His stomach turned over at the way the bastard's eyes stayed resolutely open.

"This plan was not nearly as gay in my head," Dean muttered.

And he kissed him.

Intense cold wrapped around his entire body like chains coiling and squeezing. His nerve endings went off like fireworks, every hair stood on end with crackling energy, and his nose and mouth filled with ash. It choked him, trying to force its way down his throat. A low whine in his ears amped up to a wail, then louder, until it felt like blood vessels were bursting in his head.

Piercing through the pain, crippling in its clarity, his anti-possession tattoo burned on his chest.

He couldn't breathe through it, he was a moron, this was a bad fucking idea, sign him up for a Darwin award this second, please God let it end already—

His eyes opened.

He lay aching on the floor next to Sam, who was crouched on one knee and yelling words against a whirlwind of black smoke. Salt grains on the air whipped by and scored their faces. The lights flickered crazily, and then blew out in crackling showers of glass slivers.

Maria lay prone nearby, catching her breath in gasps and holding onto Dean's wrist like a lifeline. On his other side, Sam had a mean grip on his shoulder with one hand and that stupid cat figurine with the other.

A wordless shriek rode the whirlwind, echoing around and around and then down into Sam's outstretched hand.

Everything stopped.

The lights buzzed back to steady yellow life.

Sam stared at the fading glow of the porcelain cat in his palm.

"Holy shit," Dean croaked. "Is it just me, or am I not dead?"

Sam glared at him. "Don't get too excited. I might still kill you."

Fingernails dug into Dean's wrist and then released. Maria crawled on her hands and knees to James, who was laid out on the floor like some kid's discarded G.I. Joe. Dean pushed himself to sitting crabwise and watched as she put two fingers to James' neck. After a few seconds of silence, she started shuddering with held-in sobs.

Fuck. All for nothing. Fuck.

"He's alive," she gasped out, and a hysterical giggle escaped her. "Oh, my God, he's alive."

"Fantastic," Dean said, rolling sideways and making to get up. Sam rose with him, offering a hand, and they pulled each other to their feet.

Sam gave him a once-over and said, "You good?"

Dean took a second to think about it. His lungs had a scorched feel to them, but that was fading with every fresh breath. His muscles ached like a son of a bitch, but hey—nothing new. All in all, no permanent damage.

"I'm good."

"Good."

And Sam popped him one in the jaw.


	5. Chapter 5

Dean woke up at two-thirty on Mardi Gras afternoon, bleary-eyed and cranky after too little sleep and then too much. The motel room was dim, and the other bed was empty.

"Sam?" he croaked at the closed bathroom door.

The bathroom door didn't answer.

On the nightstand next to him was a cup of coffee, still steaming, and a neatly printed note: _Gone out for a couple hours_.

Dean was pretty sure he knew where. "Oh, you are going to be drawing your eyebrows in with Sharpie for weeks," he muttered with no real heat. This wasn't a big shock, after all. Sam Winchester doing things his own cussheaded way, news at ten.

Dean could go after him. He could also go down to where the entire city was having a party out on the sidewalk. He might catch the truck parades, and they threw more loot than stodgy old Rex ever did.

He rolled out of bed, got himself dressed and cleaned up, and shouldered open the door to some truly obnoxious sunshine. "Bitch better not have taken the car," he told the parking lot.

Bitch hadn't.

Dean made some phone calls, and he drove out to West End.

A black monster of a pickup truck was parked in front of the Broussards' boat house. The thing looked like it ran on testosterone and tobacco juice, and James leaned on the bumper with his arms crossed. He was dressed in loose-fitting jeans, and except for the lines of bandages under his American Eagle T-shirt, he looked like any other douchebag twenty-something.

"Harrison," he said with a poker face that had probably been leveled at a lot of officers and a few MPs.

"Broussard."

"You got it?"

Dean hefted a duffel bag. "You?"

James dangled a set of keys on a flotation fob.

"Let's get started."

In the shade of the boat house's tin roof, on the slab next to the dock, they spread out their tools and got to work. It didn't take long, and they didn't talk. When it was finished, they stepped into the Whaler, and James lowered the outboard into the water. Dean untied them, and James steered through the half-rebuilt harbor and out around the jetty.

The lake was glass-smooth, stretching west to the Causeway and north out of sight. James leaned on the throttle, and the bow rose up out of the water in an eager surge. Behind them, their wake churned up white, narrowed and solidified, and then the hull leveled out to planing.

Dean stood with one hand on the console and let cool, briny air rush past him at forty miles an hour.

It was a twenty minute ride out past the comfortable distance for skiing or fishing. When the city skyline started losing its shape in the distance, James eased back and cut the engine. The wake carried the boat forward in one rocking pitch, and then they were drifting.

The sudden silence left Dean holding his breath.

"Good enough?" James said.

"Good enough." From the duffel, Dean pulled a stainless steel curse box modeled on the ones in Dad's lockup. Every seam had been soldered shut and polished smooth, and the binding sigils had been etched into the interior walls. The lake-bottom's sludgy mud would swallow the curse box long before rust ate it to pieces.

"It's only twenty-odd feet deep here," James said. "You sure you want to just—"

Dean shook up a can of WD-40, sprayed every side of the box liberally, and tossed it. It hit the water with a plop, and not even bubbles came up behind it.

James didn't fire up the engine right away. He sat on the gunwale and listened to the soft, timid sound of water kissing the hull. "You molested me," he said at last, as if it had just occurred to him. Then he cracked a smirk. "You pervy son of a bitch."

"Saved your ass," Dean said, pulling a warm Abita Amber out of the duffel and cracking it open.

"Yeah, I guess so," James muttered, sobering. "That was some grade-A fuckwitted crazy you pulled. You shouldn't have done it."

"Probably not." Dean held out a Blue Moon and a Red Ale, and James snagged the latter.

"So why did you?" There was a quick hiss, and James tossed his bottle cap overboard. "Mia batted her Bambi eyes, and you rushed headlong into danger's gaping maw?"

Dean leered as offensively as he knew how. "And guess how she thanked me."

"He saves lives and cracks wise," James singsonged. "Modern American hero." And he leaned out over the water, trying to catch the eye of his shifting reflection.

"You hit Sonia too," Dean said before he could stop himself. "Didn't you?"

James tipped his beer for another sip.

Dean knocked it out of his hand. The glass ground against James' teeth, and then beer flew in the sunlight and the bottle smacked the water and bobbed away.

"You did the world a real favor," said James, contempt in his face and blood welling on his lower lip. "Keeping me in it."

"Fuck you," Dean said, sitting back on the deck. It was out of his jurisdiction, and he didn't really expect anything from this asshole anyway. Not from another dumb grunt on the highway to hell. "Just go home and be nice to your kid sister. She seems to think you're a decent person, all evidence to the contrary."

"Yeah," James said very quietly. "She thinks that."

And he stood up and threw the engine into gear.

Maria stood waiting for them on the dock, dressed neatly in jeans and a cashmere sweater like she hadn't spent last night tweezing glass shards out of people's skin. She walked up to meet the Whaler as it glided in, and her heels were loud on the wooden planks.

Dean tossed her the bowline, and she cleated it down proficiently while James tied off the stern.

"It's done?" she said.

"Squared away," Dean replied.

She looked past him with cautious hope, and she said to James' back, "Emma's being released from the hospital this evening."

He nodded, hanging bumpers over the gunwale, and he didn't look at her.

Dean shook his head. "You've been a real pain in the ass, Broussard," he said by way of farewell, and he headed out into the sunshine.

Maria walked him to his car, and he didn't turn to face her until he had the driver's side door open between them. She knew he was on a deadline, and last night she'd smiled at him in the darkness. If she did it again in daylight, he might go a little wistful and stupid, like that time in Nebraska when he promised, _I'm not the praying type, but_…

Sam should have been here, the jackass. Dean never said candy-ass shit like that when Sam was watching.

"Thank you for my family," Maria said with weird formality, as if she might punctuate it with a curtsy. "I don't know how I can ever repay you."

Some long night on a stakeout Dean would have to think of a better response to that than some waggled eyebrows. But for now—what the hell. It made her laugh.

"Emma passed along a message," she said, still smiling. "She said you do a better Atticus Finch than that old fart in the movie."

"She's a sweet kid," Dean said. "I hope…" _I hope she learns Braille fast? Hope she's a ninja with that white cane?_ "I hope she'll be okay."

The smile faded. "So do I."

Dean cleared his throat. "If you ever see anything in our line of work again, you call Sam. He'll help."

She licked her lips. "What about you?"

"Me, I'm going to catch the tail end of Mardi Gras." _Last hurrah before the sacrifice. You grew up here, girl, you should know this_. "Big party out there."

Maria smiled ruefully and let him dodge her question. "I should tell you," she said hesitantly. "I didn't walk up to you with that camera because you were tall."

Dean grinned his most rakish. "Oh, sweetheart, I knew that."

"It was the boots," she admitted, going faintly pink. "You were wearing scuffed-up work boots with your tux."

It would have been better if she'd just agreed that he was one sexy, panties-melting son of a bitch. Then he could have said something crude, and she would have laughed. He could have driven off into the sunset with the windows down and the music up.

But in the darkness, he had smiled back at her, and now she looked at him different.

"May second," he said for the first time. He and Sam had always used the countdown, not the date. The date was a real thing, anchored on a calendar. "You can reach me 'til May second."

Even on her toes, she wasn't tall enough to kiss his cheek. He bowed his head to let her.

"Goodbye."

"Take care."

As he drove away, he angled his cheek in the rearview mirror. She hadn't left a lipstick print.

::

::

A light shone from Elena's kitchen window when Dean pulled up in front of the house, and through the gauzy curtains he saw shadows rise and shift. Sam must have heard the Impala; there was no way he didn't recognize the sound of her engine.

The front door banged open the same moment Dean slammed the car door. Houston, we have liftoff.

"Whatever you're going to say, just don't," Sam said, striding down the front walk. Behind him, Elena leaned silhouetted in the doorway, watching the Winchesters like an old, sad movie she'd seen too often before.

"Don't even," Dean said, planting his feet halfway up the walk. You cannot pass, bitch. "You're not getting in my car until you explain what you're doing here when I damn well told you—"

"Don't worry, she can't help you," Sam said viciously, stepping right up in Dean's space and reminding him of the four inches and twenty pounds he had on big brother. "No one can help you. You're going to get your own fucking way and burn in hell, so it's all good."

Dean shoved him back by the shoulders, sharp but controlled. "I asked you what you're doing here, Sam."

Sam snapped out an arm, swatting him away. "Don't touch me."

"I distinctly remember telling you not to come here. More than once."

"Jesus," Sam hissed, hands coming up like he was two seconds from wrapping them around Dean's throat. He was nothing but rage in a thin layer of skin right now, and there was no one to point a gun at. No one to hold accountable but Dean. "What am I supposed to do?" he shouted. "How else am I supposed to do this?"

"Sam—" Dean started.

He didn't get any farther than that. A wet sheen had turned Sam's eyes to blown glass, hot and overbright. It was Pavlovian, the way Dean's guts twisted up and his lungs went leaden.

This, right here, was why Dean blew off the conjure man in Charlotte. This was why the rootworker in St. Louis and the sweet little rare books dealer in St. Rose and Miss Elena—especially Miss Elena—were crap ideas. This moment here, when the death sentence fell all over again.

"Sammy," Dean said quietly.

They stood glaring at each other in the purpling light of dusk, until Sam's breathing evened out and his shoulders slumped. "You are such an asshole," he muttered, swiping the back of his hand under his nose.

"Yeah, well. You just yelled fuck in front of Miss Elena," Dean told him, serious as a third grader threatening to tell the teacher.

Sam's lips twitched, and then he scowled resentfully. _Don't think you can joke your way out of this._

Dean sighed. "So she knows. I guess she's not my biggest fan right now, is she?" he said, looking over Sam's shoulder. The disapproving shape in the doorway swayed and then disappeared, leaving the door wide open.

"Does it matter?" Sam said flatly.

It mattered to Dean.

"She's… disappointed, maybe? She started talking about mortal sin and I don't even know what, man," Sam said bitterly. "You can go talk to her if you want. I'm just… She doesn't like me either, if it makes you feel any better."

"I'm surprised she let you in the house."

"I had Maria with me for the first half hour," Sam admitted, shrugging. "I needed a ride, and she wanted to meet the conjure woman, and I figured Elena was more likely to open the door to a five foot tall girl than to me, so—"

"You are getting devious in your old age," Dean said, not without admiration.

"Learned from the best," Sam said, and it didn't sound like a compliment.

Dean let his eyes slide away from Sam, who wasn't actually in a much better mood than two minutes ago when he'd been pitching a fit. The rage had bled out of him, and he sagged gray-faced and exhausted. Despair could do that to you. And Dean had had enough of that shit.

But the door still yawned open.

He didn't owe Elena an explanation, and he'd be an idiot to try to justify himself to her. But he remembered falling asleep on her carpet that smelled of mold, and he remembered half-waking at the soft flutter of a sheet as she covered him up. "Wait in the car, would you?"

Sam gave him that pitying look—the one Dean always wanted to remove with his fist. "Man, what good is it going to do?"

_Maybe he deserves it_, the spirit had said, and Elena was throwing around words like _mortal sin_.

"Dean?"

"None," he said, clipped and decisive, and he turned his back on the house. "It's not going to do a damn thing."

They got into the car, and the radio wailed that sometimes the simple life ain't so simple. Not when you're runnin' with the devil. Dean took a turn and eased his baby gently around buckled asphalt that bulged volcanically up from the rest of the street. Freaking subsidence. What bunch of idiots built a city on silt?

"Dean?"

"What?"

Sam reached over and turned down the volume on Van Halen. "What happened in Arizona?"

Dean blew air through his teeth, long and slow.

Sam made an effort; he really did. He offered up a half-smile that practically invited Dean to start telling outrageous lies. "Did you hook up with a mexicana and learn Spanish for the dirty talk?"

"Tell you what," Dean said slowly, watching the road with his eyes half-lidded and his jaw set. He wasn't putting up with any more of this cautious, mournful crap. Not tonight, and not in this city. "If we ever make it out there—maybe see the Grand Canyon—then I'll tell you that story."

Sam's expression went carefully blank.

"Deal," he said, and he cranked down his window and turned the radio up louder than the rush of air past the frame.

::

::

Dean spent the night in the Marigny, where God kept his best food and booze and easy women on this day of days. Mardi Gras wasn't over yet on Frenchmen Street—wouldn't be til dawn—and pirate wenches and sexy nurses and fairy queens stumbled in and out of the warmth of smoke-filled bars. A whole two blocks of bars. Bizarre walked the streets alongside sexy, made surreal by the darkness and the neon and the whiskey haze. Dean saw two men swaggering down the street draped in heavy masses of Spanish moss, beers in their hands and strings of beads nestling in the gray curls.

From the open doors of the Apple Barrel came the wail of a blues guitar, and in a great tangle the crowd writhed and swayed, spilling out onto the sidewalk.

A girl in a pink wig and knee-high striped socks pressed herself drunkenly against Dean, grinning up at him. She was dragging another girl by the wrist, this one corseted to an impossible hourglass and wearing peacock feathers in her thick blonde hair.

"My friend thinks you're hot," Pink Hair said, adjusting the boa over her shoulders.

The blonde squealed, "Julie!"

But she cocked her hip when he snaked an arm around her waist, and she let him buy her a drink.

Deep in the press of bodies and pounding bass, her hips twisted under his hands. She ran a hand up under his shirt and the alcohol sang in his blood and her breasts spilled over the top of her corset and pressed against his chest. He shoved a thigh between her legs, let her grind down, nose to her neck to breathe in the cheap perfume made potent by her overheated skin. He'd never been much for dancing, but this—this he could drown in.

Dean kissed sweat from her throat and never asked her name.

And when she looked up through her lashes, pupils blown wide and wanting, he didn't imagine her eyes black and rabid. He didn't spend one second on judgment and hellfire. Not a damn second.


End file.
